Under the eye of a new Tiger

AussieRulesBlog isn’t sure how to react to news that former Richmond skipper and assistant coach Wayne Campbell is to replace Jeff Gieschen as head of the AFL’s umpiring department.

 

Regular readers will understand that we thought Gieschen was a disaster in the role, overseeing a culture where the AFL industry understood that a pronouncement from The Giesch on a topic meant a crackdown on that particular aspect of the game for the next few weeks.

 

We are cautiously optimistic that there are people within the AFL hierarchy working for a less zealous approach to gameday officiating. We hope this means a move toward consistent interpretations of rules from season’s start to season’s end — but we’re not quite prepared to hang by our thumbs waiting.

 

Campbell is an interesting choice for the role, and we’re not the first to point out that Gieschen too had a Richmond connection — discarded senior coach — before being appointed.

 

The Tiger faithful will howl, but Campbell never impressed us as a player. That doesn’t mean, of course, that he can’t be an eminently capable administrator.

 

We have reason to think that Campbell’s approach will differ from Gieschen’s and will embrace a more relaxed, less doctrinaire stance by umpires.

 

Among changes to the rules to be introduced in the 2014 season, Campbell will be overseeeing:

1. Free kicks against and reporting of players bumping and making contact with their opponent’s head;
2. Free kicks against players who duck into (nearly) stationary opponents if they are tackled and do not dispose of the ball legally — and a play-on call when a player ducks into a tackle (we might name this the Selwood Rule?);
3. Free kicks against players using their heads to make forceful contact below the knees of an opponent. We’re not sure if the much-maligned “diving” rule has been put down, but we’re hoping.
4. The hands-in-the-back rule has been softened by the addition of the word “unduly”; and
5. The interchange penalty has been returned to earth after a trip into the realms of fantasy.

We don’t think many fans will have too many problems with these changes. It will be interesting to see how Joel Selwood fares. We suspect he’ll still get more than his share of touches and will still inspire a whole team.

 

Disappointingly, it seems the holding the ball rule, at least as it’s written in the book, isn’t changing and there doesn’t appear to be any move to stamp out opponents holding a ball to an opponent to milk a free kick, despite a number of promises over a number of years. Perhaps that’s an area where we can look for the Campbell influence to shine?