Whose advantage?

Watching 2011 AFL games, the inequities of player-initiated advantage are  plain for all to see. Advantage per se is a problematic concept to implement in Aussie rules anyway, but it’s definitely been taken a step too far.

 

To understand the inequities, it’s important to analyse how advantage works currently. The umpire blows his whistle for a free kick. If the ball has spilled to a member of the team receiving the free kick, and the umpire judges that the movement of the ball has been continuous, then advantage — player-initiated — is called.

 

Where the free kick is quite obvious, this system works, notwithstanding the merit or otherwise of the extent of the advantage provided.

 

However, when the free kick is indeterminate, whichever players have the ball or are contesting for the ball must turn their attention to one of three umpires to determine who will receive the free kick. If your team isn’t the recipient of the free kick, you’re in your back half and you kick the ball to an advantage situation without having seen the umpire’s signal, you gift the opposing team a 50-metre penalty and a gimme shot for goal.

 

So, player-initiated advantage is really only a benefit if it is a clear cut free kick and you’re in your forward half. Pardon us as small-‘l’ liberals, but we think that raises all sorts of inequities.

 

But we can go a step further and consider the whole notion of advantage in Aussie rules. As things stand at present, umpires blow their whistles for every decision that they make — even a mark in clear space where the player is odds-on to take the ball and immediately play-on is whistled as a mark.

 

Players have been conditioned through their entire careers to stop on the whistle. Rules have been introduced to reinforce that conditioned behaviour.

 

We aren’t expert in any other games — many would say not in Aussie rules either — but advantage seems to be dealt with more sensibly in other football codes. In rugby, for instance, it appears that the referee will hold off whistling to see how a particular piece of play unfolds. If the team receiving the penalty is advantaged by subsequent play, the referee indicates advantage has been awarded — without a whistle — and play continues. Both soccer and rugby league seem to follow a similar process.

 

We are also seeing player-initiated advantage being called by umpires on the most spurious evidence, such that, sometimes, there is an actual disadvantage, but this is an interpretation effect rather than a consequence of the advantage concept.

 

In the same way that video-assisted decision making doesn’t suit the flow of Aussie rules, advantage doesn’t suit the traditional umpiring style of Aussie rules.

 

We are certainly not in favour of so-called professional free kicks given away to slow opponents’ advances, but we are just as certain that the pendulum has been swung too far.