Australian rules football is a complex sport. Its speed, free-flowing 360° nature, physicality and eccentric ball all combine to give a unique character to the wonderful game we love. Paradoxically, those same aspects make it one of the most difficult sports to officiate.
AussieRulesBlog thinks most will agree that a key criterion for on-field officials is an indefinable ‘feel’ for the game.
‘Feel’ is that mysterious quality of understanding that was missing on Friday night when deciding deliberate out of bounds decisions. It’s the quality missing when umpires officiate the game strictly, literally, ‘by the book’.
Some umpires have a feel for the game, organically. Peter Cameron and Glen James are two that come to mind from the past. Some others clearly don’t. Of the current crop, Steve McBurney, Dean Margetts, Justin Schmidt and Michael Jennings are those who we think don’t have a feel for the game. Match Review Panel chairman Mark Fraser, previously both an AFL player and senior umpire, seems not to have that feel in his current role.
It’s obviously difficult to recruit umpires. It’s a key element of supporters’ self-appointed role to provide vociferous advice to umpires on the job, even at under-age levels. At the top level, umpires are not professional and only those with flexible employment arrangements can contemplate taking the job on.
It is past time the game had fully-professional field umpires who could devote themselves to the task more fully. Not least of the benefits we might perceive could be a greater consistency of interpretation, but perhaps the AFL Umpiring department could do more to develop and encourage a ‘feel’ for the game as its umpires develop.
There was a sign held up by a spectator as the umpires exited the field on Friday night. It was obviously not a spur of the moment production, but it was curiously appropriate on a night when the interpretation of deliberate out of bounds had been turned on its head. “Umpire: All we want is consistency!” the sign stridently demanded. Ditto!
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3 comments:
You once said that you can't imagine what full-time umpires could possibly do for the rest of the week and how bored they'd be.
To quote - "If footballers can be thought to have too much time on their hands, what would a full-time umpire do all day? The poor buggers would be bored to snores by Tuesday afternoon!"
Source: http://aussierulesblog.blogspot.in/2011/04/master-whistlers.html
Why the change of heart?
What a sharp memory you have there, Navaneethan!
Semi-professionalism in umpiring rules out those who don't have jobs that provide the flexibility required in the modern game. With games scheduled across the three or four (or sometimes five!) days of a weekend, meeting the commitments of the jobs most of us hold equires a very understanding employer at the very least.
I don't know whether it's an accident, or a simple coincidence, but lawyers, for instance, seem to be over-represented amongst the recent crop of senior umpires. Perhaps my opinion is coloured by the inadequacies and over-officiousness I perceive in umpires like Steve McBurney.
So, my change of heart is based on widening the pool of available umpiring talent by providing a good living for those deemed to show promise.
Of course, more respect would make a difference too, but it has to be earned by quality and consistency of performance and we certainly aren't getting that in recent years.
Thanks for you comment.
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