It wasn’t our intention for focus again on boundary-line ruck contests, but watching the Brisbane— West Coast game on TV certainly put it front and centre in our mind.
Nic Naitanui is a fearsomely talented player. His natural leap and athleticism must give him an automatic advantage over ninety per cent of the other players at AFL level. Why then, for most of the second half of the Brisbane game, would he resort to grabbing the back of his ruck opponent’s guernsey and holding it for all he was worth?
More to the point, where is the much-vaunted all-round coverage by the umpires? On a couple of occasions, Leuenberger’s guernsey had been pulled halfway up his torso and still there was no free kick!
The current umpiring cop-out in ruck contests that both are holding just doesn’t wash for AussieRulesBlog. There are rules. If they’re broken, apply penalties as appropriate. Currently, when ruck free kicks are awarded, neither the ruckmen nor fans have any idea of why. A genuine contest is all we ask for.
And while we’ve got the sights on the umpires, we wonder when Steve McBurney is taking delivery of a specially trained Labrador. In the closely fought last quarter of the Brisbane–West Coast game, a West Coast defender applied a genuine full nelson to a Brisbane forward in a marking “contest” in Brisbane’s attacking goal square, locking both his arms, about fifteen metres in front of McBurney. Not even the hint of a free kick. . .
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