Will Jeff Gieschen kill the 50-metre penalty?

The 50-metre penalty was initially introduced to combat 'professional' time-wasting. Defenders would hurl the ball back over a free kick recipient's head in order to buy time to man up. A player taking a mark would be dragged to the turf — again to buy time to man up. In the past, time-wasting activities like kicking the ball over the boundary line were used for the same purpose. Brent Guerra, in the 2008 Grand Final, used deliberately rushed behinds to waste time in an attacking ploy.

I have no problem with the 50-metre penalty in these situations.

Recently though, we've seen 50-metre penalties applied for trifling indiscretions: touching an umpire (not aggressively); pointing at an umpire; pointing at your own eyes (in a threatening manner?); abuse of an umpire; and some in-play examples that are inconsistently adjudicated . . . Arguably inconsistent applications include the contrast between the Heath Shaw suspension and the Henry Slattery letoff for touching umpires (it's not hard to argue that Shaw's action was more aggressive than Slattery's) that was announced as a zero tolerance policy a few short weeks ago.

AFL Umpiring Director, Jeff Gieschen, has made the point that player behaviour toward umpires in the elite competition provides an 'acceptable behaviour template' (my words, my emphasis) for players in lesser competitions, where security arrangements for umpires might be non-existent. I'm sure there are scenarios every weekend of the season where umpires in lesser competitions fear for their safety.

Despite this rational argument, the practical implementation leaves much to be desired. As things stand at Round 5 of 2009, the umpires are looking precious. Perhaps it's a personality-driven thing. Is it just me, or does Steve McBurney feature disproportionately in the awarding of off-the-ball 50-metre penalties? Does he have super vision, is he simply extra vigilant, or is he the ultimate umpiring technocrat? (I'll go for #3.)

Whatever the reasons, whatever the justifications, the elite-level game is now littered with 50-metre penalties for trivial offences. A penalty awarded anywhere forward of the half-back line virtually means a kick for goal. This is too large a penalty for many of the infractions it is applied to.

Applying my Nostradamus-like qualities to this conundrum, I'd suggest we'll see a review of these interpretations for the next season.

This has been yet another example of the AFL trying to crush a peanut with a 50-tonne press.