AFL umps, it's time to pull your head in

I think you are right, Shannnon. 20 metres is a mark. Yet, they stll allow Sam Mitchell to count his marks from 10 metre kicks just so he won't be tackled.

I'm with Stewart. Very precious, Wayne. It is also a very cliched response to the player in question. Every weak umpire has tried that one. (And I've umpired hockey for a long time)

I'm in full agreement with you on this Dingo - and I think I did hear someone on the weekend suggest the deliberate rushed behind may at some stage be looked at to be brought in to line. The umps in general do a pretty good job. On a side note, however, the free paid against Levi Casboult against the Doggies on Saturday night for 'throwing the ball back a bit too hard' was I thought a little precious!

Letting them just play is pretty much how the game started in the 1800s. Since then the game evolved over long experience into something pretty coherent. The fiddling with interpretations to intentionally change the game, which started when the AFL got ambitious for the code, set the clock back. In the end they started re-inventing the wheel (eg hands in the back) and congratulated themselves on what clever fellows they were!

I think the umpires do a great job. It's a terrible hard game to umpire. I don't mind the deliberate rulings, however it does grind my gears just a little bit that a rushed behind is fine, but yet if you hand ball or kick across the boundary line it's a free kick for deliberate. I think if they revert to everything to a deliberate stance you will find good strong consistent rulings.

Talk about shooting the messenger, the umps are told what to enforce and how to enforce it by the AFL, for me they do a great job. Sounds like you have a big case of sour grapes and perhaps a couple of calls may have gone against your team, well bad luck, it's AFL, it's always been that way. The new out of bounds rule is excellent and yeah a couple of times it may have been policed wrong, but so has high contact, so is incorrect disposal, and so is just about every other ruling in the game.

I don't understand this consensus from supporters that umpires 'ruin' the game and that we should just 'let the players play' (or words to that effect). As if the players are actually interested in how the game 'looks' - they will do anything they can within the limits of the rules to get an advantage. And they follow the orders of coaches whose only interest is the W column - not how attractive their style of play is. 'Letting them play' by rules that have inherent grey areas is where the trouble starts; it's not some kind of solution.

So you’re saying it shouldn’t be deliberate…because you don’t like players standing around with their arms extended? That happens quite a lot you do realise? Watch next time someone gets tackled. There will be a couple of teammates of the tackler standing there, arms extended, wanting a free for holding the ball. I agree it should be deliberate if it bounces out from an errant kick. I’d also argue that the greater blight on the game was the ever increasing number of stoppages. I’ll take players wanting frees over endless stoppages and boundary throw-ins any day. Bit different when a bloke can claim he was taking a shot at the goal. You’re taking a strict principle and applying it regardless of context. Using a single example of play as a basis to attack a rule that has to cater for literally hundreds of different situations isn’t that credible an attack either. If Tex Walker was able to put the ball out past the behind post coming out from his back 50 I’d be having a chat to ASADA about testing him.

There's this thing with enforcing clear rules as an officiator: once players learn where the metaphorical boundaries are, they will change their behaviour. IMO it's better to be as strict as possible because there leaves less room for players to take advantage. I think we have seen this - for the better of the game - with the deliberate out of bounds rule. You seem to be suggesting it is easy to officiate this rule. I highly doubt it. Players eek every little advantage out of the rules that they can. With the old deliberate interpretation, players were constantly pushing the limits of the rule - kicking towards the boundary line for example, knowing that 9 times out of ten they "can't" be pinged for deliberate... or casually running the ball over with some half-hearted acting to suggest they had no choice. The downside to allowing those behaviours was that the game stayed closer to the boundary line more often, and it was easier for teams to force ball up situations, which coaches like because it's a tactic to stem the flow of an opposition team. The new, stricter deliberate interpretation almost completely removes the incentive to do these things and you cannot argue that the game isn't better for it. I think the balance on that rule is just about right. Disagree also with your take on the 15m kicking interpretation. FWIW what I've noticed is not over officiating on longer kicks, but inconsistency in applying it to shorter kicks (including inconsistency between umpires, which is to be expected). But again, I think players will eventually change their behaviour and will no longer assume anything around the 10-12m range is a mark. We will still see shorter kicks but players will instinctively play on. It might take a while - changing that sort of behaviour won't happen overnight.

I disagree it must be deliberate if the ball bounces out of play from an errant kick. We're already seeing players rather appeal for a free kick than actually go after the ball near the boundary line. A blight on the game. In the hawks game billy hartung was running next montagna, he soccered the ball towards the line montagna turned to the umpire was flapping his arms appealing for a free, hartung managed to run past him and pick the ball up inside the line. I am yet to see a deliberate paid against someone kicking the ball out of bounds in their own forward line. Tex walker punted the ball from the center square to a vacant forward line, the ball dribbled out near the behind post - all good. You can rest assured if came out his back 50 doing that he would've been penalised.

Hockey umpire I feel for you.and I hope it was not a Tuggranoung player was it :). as a player of hockey I have got frastrated with umpires at times but as you say you have that split second to make a decision and when there is feet ball and legs in the way it can be hard thing to do. and Stewart a captain would only apologise if he know that his play is in the wrong if he had agreed with his player he would have not said a word and that is from someone that has been a Captain

Yes, I think it can be seen as deliberate. If he’s not willing to risk a turnover close to goal by attempting a handball and is trying a clearance kick, then he shouldn’t be rewarded with a stoppage for finding the boundary with the clearing kick. It’s pretty simple I think, kick it to a teammate or allow a teammate to contest the ball and it won’t be deliberate. If he finds a teammate near the sideline who can knock it over in a contested mark, it’ll be a throw-in. If he misses his target and it bounces out, it’s a free kick. I don’t have a problem with poor skill execution being penalized by free kicks. It might not meet the dictionary definition of “deliberate” but the result is the same, and I don’t think the team that finds the boundary should be rewarded with a stoppage for poor skills.

Think the rest of us can see who needs to pull their head in between these two remarks.

How about changing the deliberate rule to something like: the players must do all he (she) can to keep the ball in? This is still going to be subjective, but that only matters in a small % of situations. A number of times so far this season players have elected not to knock, handball or otherwise keep the ball in play. Of course this will not always be to the advantage of their team I suspect the result would be more centre corridor play as teams do their utmost to avoid the boudary. At first, I thought this would be good until I realised coaches would concentrate most of the 18 in that corridor, and congestion would result - not what we want to see in the game. Still, is there anything in this idea? Oh, and by the way, SR I reckon you're too cynical about the umps. Your cynicism belongs to past attempts by the AFL to effectively interpret the original rules out of the game, and we've never quite recovered from that.

Completely disagree with this article. Yes Umpires are only there to police the game, however they are following laws of the game to the best of their ability based on a live judgement call while constantly being scrutinised by people who watch slow-mo replay after slow-mo replay. Plus, umpires in AFL have to be some of the best match officials in any sport. Try watching NRL or football to see how many calls they actually do get correct. "What we’ve ended up with, however, is watching helplessly as marked kicks that have travelled almost 20 metres being met with screams of “Play on!” from umpires, desperate to show that they listened to the bigwigs" Unless umpires can visualise a tape measure thus allowing you to know if a kick is exactly 15m or more, then you are prone to make a judgment call. This isnt making the 'bigwigs' happy, this is doing the best you can as a human who is prone to making mistakes. I dont think it's umpires who should be the ones to 'pull' their heads in (god I hate that line), it should be the fans who should 'pull' their heads in (still hate that line) and stop criticising every minute call.

This is just an ill-informed rant masquerading as an article. Kicks travelling 15m – clearly it’s a change of tack in officiating, previously any doubt about distance was judged as being in favour of the team in possession and it was paid a mark. Now umpires are giving benefit of the doubt to the team not in possession and calling play on. If you’re using Andrew Stephens’ howler down in Tasmania as a basis for this article, I think that’s misguided as that was clearly a mistake. As others have said too, I don’t think you understand how umpires are rated and graded on their performance. Secondly, out of bounds – you’ve missed the point of the rule. You’re claiming a player who hoofs the ball upfield as far as they can and then sees it bounce out of play is being unfairly penalised with a free kick against. If they’re not kicking it to a friendly player, and just kicking it to space – then they run the risk of it going out and they know they’ll be paid a deliberate against them. This isn’t a surprise to anyone anymore. This was precisely the sort of thing the rule was brought in to stop, players just bombing it long and trying to get a stoppage and slowing the game down.

Clearly there is no incentive for them to get it wrong, but how about you enlighten us as to what you as an umpire were told as to how to interpret deliberate out of bounds, for one? Was guessing a part of the training? 2 instances come to mind that have happened in the past few weeks. In the first, I think it was Carlton v Sydney where a Swans player was throwing the ball back to the Carlton player who was running backwards and made an effort to take a few extra steps so the ball dropped short - the result, a 50 metre penalty. The umpire clearly guessed without viewing the incident in its entirety. The second happened this past weekend where Pendlebury was the player running backwards. This time, you could clearly hear the umpire tell him that he was running backwards so there would be no 50 metre penalty. Clearly, there has been some additional training of umpires in the interim, based on the first bad call, but the problem is that umpire in the first instance just didn't know enough and guessed. The article is fine - pay the obvious stuff and let the rest go. Is an umpire going to get dropped because he decided that a ball bombed out of a pack that took a sharp turn to the boundary was not deliberate out of bounds? I wouldn't think so. I agree, they need to pull their heads in.