Is it good to have footy back? Too right it is. And the game seems to have changed while we weren’t watching. The first three quarters of the Hawks-Barcodes game was full-on pressure with pretty much no time to steady. In these conditions, it’s the quality of the bottom third of the team that becomes crucial — as both Richmond and the Barcodes have discovered.
But one thing has really stood out to us in watching the first two ‘real’ games of the season — sorry, Giants and Swans — and that’s the number of free kicks plucked out for incidental contact.
We understand that the rules are written so that incidental illegal contact is to be penalised. The problem we have is that the application of the rules to such fleeting, unintentional contacts is so wildly inconsistent. And it stands out so much more in such hotly-contested, closed-up football.
The game’s administrators declare their determination to get as many decisions right as possible and implement a half-baked video referral system, but the inconsistency of general umpiring continues unabated and, seemingly, unnoticed by the powers that be.
And it wouldn’t really be footy season if we didn’t have umpires guessing. Ah well, even footy with crap umpiring is better than no footy!
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4 comments:
What did you think of the decision to award the Behind when Budd took a mark just over the line?
G'day Navaneethan. Good to hear from you again.
No problems at all with the decision. He didn't control the ball until the second grab over the goal line and that's a behind every time. Although I didn't think they needed the uninformative video replay to make it. I reckon Chelsea — the goal umpire — knew it was a behind but Mr Pedantic — McBurney — wanted to go to the video review.
I was under the impression that the video review was only for the NAB Cup. Who is paying for the cameras in Premiership games? And which angles do they cover?
The anouncement was made about 10 days ago Video Review Highlights 'goalie' errors.
The cameras being used are only those that the host broadcaster decides to employ. The AFL won't spring the extra funds for proper goal line cameras, so for the most part cameras are at about 45° or 90° to the goal line and all but useless. So for any review that's called for, the video review official has only the broadcast cameras to call upon. It is desperately inadequate to the task that it's supposed to perform.
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