We often don’t agree with the Match Review Panel, but we think they got it right on James Kelly’s “bump” that flattened Brendon Goddard.

And just so anyone who knows of our Bombers allegiance doesn’t think we’re miffed at our new star player copping a knock, we think the MRP’s decision on Paddy Ryder’s hit on Luke McPharlin was right too.

So, the Kelly decision was an opportunity for the Chicken Littles to come out and claim the end of civilisation. Kelly’s teammate and captain, Joel Selwood, tweeted “ 'Sad day: the bump is dead' ”. North Melbourne forward Drew Petrie joined the clamour: “It says to us all, as players, 'Don't bump' ”

No, fellas. What it says is don’t iron out a bloke off the ball with a shirtfront. Steve Johnson did a similar thing last year. At least when Kelly hit Goddard the ball is in shot — Johnson was in a different postcode.

Kelly, Johnson and Ryder didn’t execute a bump. They went into the contest with the objective of hurting their opponent. If Kelly wanted to keep Goddard away from the contest, he could have legally done so by extending his arms and shepherding.

Guys, you can bump as much as you like. Deliver a hip and shoulder bump to an opponent’s side and, as long as you keep your feet and don’t fly, there’s virtually no chance of being suspended.

The tweets could more properly have remarked on the end of the shirtfront. And good riddance.

The Giesch seems to think that all you need to understand the rules of the game is his precious DVD. We’re pretty sure he’s relying on the old adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words. He couldn’t be more wrong.

The proof, if any were needed, is the furore that has erupted these last two weeks over marking contests.

The rules around physical contact, as they’ve been stated in words since at least 2008, are very clear. In a marking contest — or any other physical contest on the field of play — it is legal to push an opponent in the side or in the chest with an open hand  as long as the ball is within 5 metres.

The umpire’s job is pretty simple under these conditions.

• Was the ball within 5 metres? Yes or no?
• Did player 1 push player 2 with an open hand? Yes or no?
• Did player 1 push player 2 in the side or chest? Yes or no?

In each case, if the answer is Yes, the contact is legal. If the answer is No, a free kick must be awarded.

But that was too easy for The Giesch. He has overlaid so many “interpretations” over this rule that it is all but unrecognisable.

Were there two actions? Were there hands in the back? It doesn’t matter! Was the ball within 5 metres and was the push with an open hand to the chest or side? Any No means a free kick must be awarded against the pushing player. It’s simple!

And the DVD? Well, sure it shows half a dozen examples of pushing in marking contests, but it’s far from definitive. There’re so many potential scenarios that a few pieces of video footage just can’t cut the mustard. The umpires, and the players, must have a firm foundation for understanding what is legal and what isn’t. That previously firm foundation, the written rules, has been eroded as each new interpretation obscures more of it.

Players, for the most part, probably don’t read the rules of the game. They absorb them as they play from a young age. Today’s players began playing in a much less complicated Aussie Rules environment, and they struggle to cope with the seemingly unremittent change.

Umpires are, even at the elite level, the teachers of the game. Their decisions tell the players what they can and can’t get away with. As a player tests the boundaries, he gets free-kicked and pulls back.

In 2013, we have umpires who are either trigger-happy or hesitant — and with three of them on the field, there’s sure to be an unhealthy mix of surety and hesitance.

Despite what the Giesch would have us believe, umpiring interpretations are changing on an almost weekly basis. Sitting in the stands, watching on TV, it’s as obvious as the nose on The Giesch’s face. It’s no wonder umpires are unsure. And the players just don’t have a hope.

Release The Giesch, reclaim the game!

On the AFL’s website tonight, The Giesch makes a not-very-astounding assertion:

Last week, Brisbane Lions midfielder Tom Rockliff labeled the pushing rule 'bizarre', claiming he was unaware he could not push any player in a marking contest.

Rockliff's remarks have surprised Gieschen, who says it is outlined on the Rules of the Game DVD.

The problem, Jeff, is that the 2013 Laws of Australian Football says you can push a player (in the side or the chest) in a marking contest — as long as the ball is within 5 metres.

Forget the DVD, Jeff. Get your mob to umpire to the rules that are written in the book. There’s a fair chance that we’ll get something that resembles football out of it.

Release the Giesch and reclaim the game.

Caught a bit of AFL360 tonight on Foxtel where the discussion was about the Reid-Bellchambers free kick from Anzac Day. Discussion focussed on “two actions”.

Forget the umpires, guys, the ball was 13 to 15 metres away when Reid pushed Bellchambers out of the way.

Right decision. Wrong reason. There’s a real problem in our game when the umpires are not umpiring to the Laws of Australian Football.

As AussieRulesBlog sat comfortably at the MCG on Anzac Day, there was much consternation amongst Barcode supporters when free kicks were paid after Barcodes defenders pushed their opponents before taking a mark.

It was blithely assumed by those well-informed supporters that this was a scheme hatched in the AFL Umpiring Department to deprive the Barcodes of their rightful victory, some misapplication of the new interpretation of ‘hands in the back’. The Reid-Bellchambers decision, in particular, created some excitement among the black and white faithful, more especially because Reid clearly pushed Bellchambers in the side rather than the back.

AussieRulesBlog isn’t shy about taking on the The Giesch and his mob, but we generally like to have our facts straight before going for the Giesch’s throbbing jugular.

To take the new interpretation out of the equation, we consulted our archived copy of the Laws of Football, 2008 edition — yes, we know that’s sad.

15.4.3 Permitted Contact
Other than the prohibited contact identified under law 15.4.5, a player may make contact with another player:
(b) by pushing the other player with an open hand in the chest or side of the body provided that the football is no more than 5 metres away from the player;

Sharp-eyed readers will have spotted a key phrase: provided that the football is no more than 5 metres away from the player.

Just to put this into context, the goal ‘square’ is 10 metres long and the two players in this contest are around 2 metres tall. So if a kicked ball is descending toward a player and is further away than half the length of the goal square or two and a half times the player’s height, it is a free-kick offence to push an opponent.

And guess what? Law 15.4.3 (b) appears again, in exactly the same words, in the 2013 Laws of Australian Football.

So we went looking for the video footage to check out our theory.

Here’s the Reid-Bellchambers contest, in live footage, and the start of the pushing motion. Note that the ball is not in view:

and again in live footage, here’s the ball entering the frame about 3 to 4 metres from Reid’s arms:

We’ve been able to analyse this footage fairly closely (although we don’t have high-speed or high-def footage). From the time of the push, in the first frame above, to the ball finishing in Reid’s arms, about six tenths of a second elapse.

From the ball entering the frame, in the second screen dump, to the ball in Reid’s arms is about 0.16 seconds. If the distance between the ball and Reid in the second frame is conservatively 3.5 metres, the ball is travelling at around 22 metres per second.

Working backwards, in the six tenths of a second between the push and the mark, the ball travelled about 13 metres. The ball must have been 13 metres away, or more, when Reid pushed his opponent out of the contest: FREE KICK Law 15.4.3.

For television viewers, ire is not thwarted when the umpire gives the reason for the free kick as “two actions”. What does two actions have to do with it? Where is the rule on two actions? Another of the Giesch’s nonsense interpretations.

There’s a degree of furore over the Lindsay Thomas-Ben Reid incident in the Kangaroos–Barcodes game.

As the game footage makes pretty clear, Thomas makes contact with Reid roughly 10 metres off the ball as Reid chases a North player toward the boundary. In the image above, the ball is shown against the crowd, almost directly above Alan Toovey’s head. It is clearly more than 5 metres from Reid.

Had there not been a head clash, no-one would take a scrap of notice of this incident. Despite the Laws of the Game specifying that a player cannot be shepherded unless within 5 metres of the ball, shepherds and blocks similar to this are absolutely unremarkable.

It’s also unremarkable that the Match Review Panel seems to be working to a different set of standards to the rest of us.

Hooray! It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog is in almost complete sync with the AFL, but we are today.

First and foremost we’ll see an end to the ugly blight of ruck wrestling. Making the rule trialled during the 2012 pre-season a permanent feature, ruckmen will no longer be able to make contact with each other before the ball has left the umpire’s hands.

AussieRulesBlog has a real problem with anyone who thinks the above scene is either attractive or within the other rules of the game. If Mike Pyke and David Hale aren’t holding each other in this image, then AussieRulesBlog should be watching the Melbourne ‘Victory’.

We’re not concerned that inability to wrestle for five minutes before the ball is back into play will somehow advantage ruckmen like Nic Naitanui. For all of a couple of weeks it might, and then the competition’s strategists will figure out a way to limit Naitanui’s effectiveness.

Even supposed ‘dinosaurs’ like Shane Mumford and Darren Jolley will manage. How often have either conceded an easy contest at a centre bounce in the past couple of years? No contact beforehand there, and both Mumford and Jolley have somehow contrived to deliver the ball to their midfielders pretty effectively.

We’re also in the mood to applaud the game’s custodians on their other rule changes, although we’re sad to see the relegation of the umpire’s bounce to a largely ceremonial role. It’s the beginning of the end for the bounce. In five years, it’ll be a curiosity.

Laying on tackled players and pulling the ball in beneath an opponent have been highly unattractive features of the game for too long. We’re not totally convinced about forceful contact beneath the knees, but we acknowledge the danger it poses.

Of course, there’s often quite a distance between our expectations of how a new rule will influence the game and how The Giesch’s mob implement that rule. that will be the test and we’ll reserve absolute applause until we see the rules in action.

Interchange cap
Unfortunately, there’s been a lack of will to implement an interchange cap. Long-time readers will recall that AussieRulesBlog wrote passionately of the benefits of a cap over a substitute. And, largely, our fears have been realised. There’s not that big a difference between rotation numbers in 2012 and what they were before the substitute. Entirely predictable — and we predicted it!

Surprising no-one, Barcodes chief cook and bottle washer, Eddie Everywhere, decided to wheel out the super hyperbole and suggested AFL players will be blood doping within weeks.

We’re not sure what Eddie has been sniffing, but we want some! The facts are that the game has become quicker because of unfettered interchange. Yes, players have become fitter, but their running capacity has been significantly enhanced by having more short rests. Some of Dane Swan’s visits to the pine last only thirty seconds.

It’s only logical that reducing interchanges — which the three-and-one bench was supposed to do and patently failed to achieve — will reduce players’ running capacity. They could dope, and thanks for that helpful suggestion, Eddie, or they could simply pace themselves more so they have some petrol tickets left for the last ten minutes.

Eddie and those who think like him are locked into maintaining the game exactly as it is played at the conclusion of 2012. There’s no law or logic that says that must be the case!

If players can’t rest as often, they’ll have to ration out their effort across their game time. It’s not hard to figure out. And we would likely see a reduction in soft tissue and collision injury to boot.

AussieRulesBlog waits with bated breath for the 2014 rule changes.

For goodness sake! The hyperbole being uttered in the wake of the Steve Johnson suspension is almost beyond belief.

Geelong Premiership player, James Kelly, apparently opened his mouth and the following drivel issued forth:

"These days it is getting harder and harder to be an AFL footballer and especially out on the ground, with so much happening and so many decisions you have got to make in such a short space of time," Kelly said.

"It's getting really, really hard to know what you can and can't do."

No it’s not. Not hard at all. You can’t shirtfront an opponent thirty metres off the ball. It’s against the Laws of Australian Football. Has been for as long as you’ve been playing the game at any level, James.

Perhaps young James and his AFL playing colleagues could devote some time to reading the laws of the game over the off-season? Then he’d be less likely to get his tongue dirty by putting his boot firmly in his mouth.

Even the contentious and controversial holding the ball rule looks pretty straightforward when you read it. Getting hold of the copy of the laws that The Giesch and his chums use is pretty difficult as it’s always in revision, but the basics remain relatively straightforward and playing to them gives the Giesch’s boys less room for extemporising.

Still, we do feel for James. It must be simply awful collecting a few hundred ‘k’ a year and being expected to know the laws of the game as well.

AFL Umpires boss Jeff Gieschen says that eight out of the nine deliberate out of bounds decisions last Friday night were correct and that he did not instruct the umpires to change their interpretation.

Missing the point a little bit, Jeff?

Deliberate out of bounds decisions have been a relative rarity in 2012, and then there are nine in one game and there’s not a problem? If these eight correct decisions were all so clear cut, we’re sure we see those same scenarios many times a game and they’re not penalised. So, does that mean the umpires have been making eight glaring mistakes per game?

This is the sort of denialist spin we expect from politicians. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes again. Everyone but the AFL can see that there’s a problem here.

The solution? Release the Giesch!

Friday night’s Round 20 WCE-Geelong game was remarkable for the glut of decisions penalising players for putting the ball out of bounds deliberately.

This rule has always been a bone of contention, relying as it does on the umpire’s ability to discern the player’s intent.

15.6 Free kicks — relating to out of bounds
15.6.1 When awarded
A free kick shall be awarded against a player who:
(c)  intentionally kicks, handballs or forces the football over the boundary line without the football being touched by another player;

So, the problem here is the umpire’s divination of intent. And the problem on Friday night related to some new, parallel universe version of intent that appeared mysteriously without regular precedent.

AussieRulesBlog is currently on leave, enjoying balmy sunshine in the Aussie Rules virtual media blackout that is south-east Queensland, so we’ve only seen snippets of the Suns and Lions games since the Friday night debacle. The mysterious interpretations of deliberate out of bounds don’t appear to have escaped the rabbit-proof fence as far as we can discern.

We have long championed the notion that the interpretation of the laws of the game should be the same in the first minute of pre-season as in the last minute of the Grand Final. Now, let’s add an extra demand: interpretations should be the same in every State in which the game is played.

Release The Giesch!

It’s a mark of totalitarian regimes that they do not tolerate dissent and that’s an unfortunate association for the AFL to be courting when it admonishes players or officials who comment on legitimate points of discussion in the game.

This last week, in the wake of the Ziebell-Judd equivalency, three players took to the ether to express a view and North Melbourne coach Brad Scott chose a media interview to do the same.

The three players were issued with a ‘please explain’ letter each.

Drew Petrie’s tweet: “advice for jackziebell. Stop being so courageous and playing footy hard that way it's meant to be played. Please turn into a softy!”

James Kelly’s tweet: “I was going to tweet how Zebel getting 4 weeks was a mare of a decision but decided not to so I don't get in trouble.”

The AFL has apparently determined that these comments were not in breach of Rule 23.18.2 — a rule that doesn’t appear in the AFL’s 1012 version of the laws of the game in case you were thinking of checking it out — in that they were not “unfair, unreasonable or excessive”.

It’s just too precious of the AFL to insist that players and officials cannot criticise umpires, the Match Review Panel or the Tribunal when the decisions of these AFL functionaries have a significant potential effect on how players and officials can go about their tasks.

The Ziebell decision, where even the tribunal that suspended Ziebell agreed that he’d been attempting to gain possession of the football — a fundamental tenet of the sport of Aussie Rules, surely — goes to the very heart of how players compete for the football. The tribunal has effectively said that incidentally causing injury to an opponent whilst attempting to gain possession of the ball is an infringement of the rules of the game and will carry  some penalty.

This is absolutely untenable, but even more incredible is the AFL’s response to criticism. We wonder if there’d be please explain letters for players agreeing with the tribunal’s stance?

If the decisions of umpires, the Match Review Panel and the Tribunal cannot stand the spotlight of criticism, then our game is in a pretty bad way.

And by criticism AussieRulesBlog doesn’t mean the invective hurled at umpires from the stands. The Bomber supporter (unfortunately) just below us on Friday night who commented on every umpiring decision by shouting “You idiot!” or “You moron!” is where the AFL should concentrate their efforts. We wonder if he knew he was referring to himself?

So, let’s get this straight. Jack Ziebell’s collision with Aaron Joseph in a genuine contest for the ball is equivalent to Chris Judd wrenching an opponent’s arm whilst he is pinned with a player on top of him. Of course that’s a simplistic assessment, but the similarity of the penalty — a four-week holiday each, if you hadn’t heard — invites the comparison.

The old VFL/AFL Tribunal system may have been antiquated, time-consuming and, as we then thought, inconsistent, but compared to the hotch-potch inflicted on the game by Adrian Anderson it was simply wonderful.

There is no part of the current system that delivers consistency and most parts, including basic on-field officiating, are devoid of considerations of context. The system is, quite simply, broken and it’s author cannot credibly remain in his post. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out, Adrian.

Zero tolerance is the modern AFL’s preferred response to a crisis. Zero tolerance of racism. Zero tolerance of high tackles. Zero tolerance of hands in the back. Zero tolerance of sling tackles. Ad infinitum.

The problem with the zero tolerance approach is that it removes context and nuance from the decision equation. In a zero tolerance world, the Lindsay Thomas–Gary Rohan incident is superficially similar to the Goodes slide tackle and so must be stamped out. Except that on closer inspection it’s not similar at all. The context, intent and subtle nuances of Thomas’ actions are quite different to Goodes’.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the AFL’s umpiring department declared a sort of total war of players maintaining a tackle after an opponent had disposed of the ball. Such was the zero tolerance approach of the umpires that whistles were on a hair trigger. Not being able to see that the ball had been released was simply no defence. “We WILL stamp out players holding opponents after they’ve disposed of the ball!”

And so, for a time, there were a rash of absolutely unfair free kicks paid against players who had no chance of knowing that the player they’d tackled no longer had the ball.

Fast forward to rounds seven and eight of the 2012 season from those far off days of zero tolerance and you’d think you are in a time warp. Players are routinely tackled to the ground well after disposing of the ball and the umpires’ reaction is . . . indifference.

AussieRulesBlog has long espoused the view that the rules should be interpreted the same way in the grand Final as in round one of pre-season. We’ll go further. The interpretation should be the same from season to season unless there’s a compelling reason to change it.

Where have these huge swings in interpretation come from? Zero tolerance. If you swing wildly in one direction, karma has a way of evening up by swinging you equally as far in the other direction. Zero tolerance to indifference — racism being the welcome exception.

Wouldn’t it be nice to come to a new season knowing that the umpires would apply the same interpretation of the rules that we’d been used to for years? Even if it were only two years?

Isaac Newton said it best. For every action, there’s and equal and opposite reaction. Until there’s a moderate and considered approach to these issues that crop up from time to time, we’re fated to suffer lurches in the opposite direction.

Most will recall the announcement from the AFL that “the head is sacrosanct” — another in the line of zero-tolerance responses that to some degree failed because they didn’t acknowledge circumstance, nuance and context.

This week there was the first explicit acknowledgement that AussieRulesBlog can recall that the zero-tolerance approach to high contact was a mistake. Jeff Gieschen tells the Your Call segment on the AFL website that Cyril Rioli running head-first into a stationary Dean Polo should not have drawn a free kick for high contact.

Conditioned by the AFL’s track record, in the wake of the Adam Goodes slide tackle and suspension, nearly everyone piled into Lindsay Thomas over the incident in which Gary Rohan’s leg was broken. Any more than a cursory glance was sufficient to realise that Thomas’ actions were quite different to Goodes, but the community expected a zero-tolerance response.

The AFL today clarified its approach to slide tackles, putting the onus back on the sliding player to exercise a duty of care toward other players on the field.

“It is not illegal to slide to contest the ball, but players must be aware of the potential for injury if they slide into an opponent’s knees or ankles,” said Adrian Anderson.

It’s about time that some room for nuance and judgement was allowed. Zero tolerance works just fine — just as long as every incident is exactly the same. Introduce just one variation and the zero tolerance approach doesn’t cut it.

Another incident from the Saints-Swans-Cats triple header caught our attention tonight. Swan Jude Bolton took possession of the ball in the rough vicinity of the behind post, perhaps five or six meters out from the boundary. He was running at full pace toward his own goal.

Bolton duly kicked the goal and was then pushed fair and square in the back by his Saints opponent. What concerned us about this incident was the proximity of the goal post to where Bolton’s body sprawled after the push.

A number of points need to be made.

• Bolton could easily have been pushed into forceful contact with the goal post.
• Does the duty of care the AFL is fond of talking about in relation to head-high contact also come into play if an opponent is forcefully, deliberately and unlawfully  propelled into a goal or behind post?
• Why was there no extra kick at goal, or free kick from the centre? The incident is not entirely dissimilar to a Saints player kicking the ball away after a score — in fact it’s considerably worse.

The announcement of experimental rules for the 2012 pre-season games carries no surprises. We were alerted to these changes weeks ago, but it’s interesting to see the final implementation.

AussieRulesBlog has made no secret of our enthusiasm for any change that removes ugly wrestling from ruck contests. The explanatory notes make for some intriguing consideration.

Ruckmen will not be permitted to make contact with their opponent prior to bounces and throw-ins, with umpires ensuring the players do not make contact with each other until the ball leaves the umpire’s hand. The trial is designed to encourage ruckmen to contest the ball, rather than focus on nullifying their opponent, as well as making ruck contests easier to adjudicate.

We’re not entirely sure that the last point has been achieved by adding another rule for umpires to adjudicate! It will be fascinating to see how ruckmen manage this new process.

Centre bounces have generally been genuine contests since the dividing line between ruckmen was introduced. Athletic ruckmen have had the opportunity to leap high above the more lumbering types and the umpires have, in our judgement, generally done a good job in restricting the lumberers from taking the leapers’ run away from them. The second centre circle has reduced the advantage that more athletic ruckmen might otherwise have had.

So, for this trial, at ball ups around the ground, ruckmen will not be able to touch each other until the ball has left the umpire’s hands. Frankly, we’re not sure that there’ll be much difference discernable. The ruckmen will stand quite close to each other and, as soon as the ball hits the turf, will come together in a wrestle for the five or six seconds it takes for the ball to fall back down to them. What change have we made? Not bloody much!

And we can’t wait to see how precise and precious the umpires are going to be about what constitutes a touch.

For boundary throw ins, the situation is much the same. As the ball is arcing through the air for five or six seconds, the ruckmen will be wrestling for position and advantage as they move to the fall of the ball. Again, not much bloody difference!

We can’t fault the intent of these experiments, but they don’t go nearly far enough.

AFL Operations Manager Adrian Anderson is reported in The Age to have spoken about proposals for experimental rules for the 2012 pre-season competition.

Among the possibilities are 12 points for a torpedo goal from outside the fifty-metre arc, which we regard as populist nonsense, despite the obvious difficulties in defining whether a torpedo that’s not quite right is a torpedo or not.

Other possibilities are:

■ Boundary and goal umpires allowed to pay obvious free kicks for holding and high contact. [Let’s define obvious, shall we?]

■ Ruckmen not permitted to make contact for boundary throw-ins and around-the-ground bounces.

■ Free kicks not paid for last touch over the boundary but for last kick, handball or when a player walked the ball over the line. [Still a turkey of an idea.]

AussieRulesBlog is glad to see a mention of ruck contests in the range of issues to be addressed. The description provided can only be regarded as a quick shorthand because a literal implementation of “no contact” for boundary and around-the-ground ruck contests is simply not practical.

For what it’s worth, AussieRulesBlog would like to see anything that looks like a hold or a shepherd with the arms in a ruck contest penalised. We’re really over the ruck wrestling. Fair enough if players want to engage in a test of strength, but holding or shepherding is just plain ugly. We recognise that limiting contact to the body advantages athletic, high-leaping players such as Nic Naitanui and Paddy Ryder quite strongly, however they are similarly disadvantaged in the current wrestling matches that pass for ruck contests.

Let’s have an end to umpires shouting, “Both holding!”

In the same story, there are more hints that some sort of video decision assist will be implemented, sooner rather than later. We’ve already indicated our disquiet. The story notes that only seven scoring decision errors were recorded by the AFL in 2011. Seven! How many goals, behinds, out-of-bounds and goal-line marks and scrambles were adjudicated through the season, and there were seven errors. We’re pretty sure most fans would prefer to see fewer errors of interpretation of rules in the field of play, or, at the very least, consistent interpretations across the season, rather than this manic determination to find a solution to a non-problem.

Another Grand Final scoring blunder and the football community has to, yet again, endure the nonsense proposition that technology must be used to assist umpires in scoring decisions.

Let’s start by getting the situation straight on the Wellingham “goal”. This was not a goal umpiring error per se. It was an error of process in that the goal umpire was too influenced by a field umpire.

The goal umpire was in the correct position to make a decision. The field umpire was not. We see, week in and week out, goal umpires relying on boundary umpires to assist with set shot scoring decisions. The goal umpire looks to the boundary umpire who signals whether the ball passed inside or outside the behind post. This works because the boundary umpire is standing right at the behind post.

And yet, the AFL umpiring department has field umpires — not standing at the posts and not at the goal line — directing goal umpires. Incredible.

Two years ago, the Tom Hawkins “goal” was a different matter. Hawkins’ snapshot didn’t allow any time for boundary umpires to be in position at the behind posts. The goal umpire was attempting to make ground to get into position to see the ball and, understandably, did not see the deflection from the goal post. Had the broadcaster not had a camera trained at the incident from the angle they did, it’s quite possible that only a few fans at the game would have been aware that the ball had hit the post.

In both instances then, detecting an error relied very heavily on there being a camera with a view from an appropriate angle. So, what technology are we going to employ? Instant replay from the broadcaster. And with every angle covered? Of course not.

And if that replay is inconclusive? Current practice is that the lesser score option is awarded. Is that more right than the current decision-making process?

There are three simple points to a solution to this “problem”.

1. Goal umpire’s decisions are the prime scoring decision unless some other umpire is 100% certain that the decision is incorrect.
2. Employ four goal umpires per game.
3. Australian rules football has uncertainties built in — the shape of the ball not the least of them. There is no absolutely certain process for making these decisions, so let’s accept that the current error rate of something less than one tenth of one percent is a pretty damned good result.

There is some justification for goal line cameras, but even these offer less than conclusive evidence given the speed of the ball and the often slight touches players may get on the ball.

As we’ve noted on many occasions, the negatives of video decision-assist outweigh any positives to an extraordinary degree.

• In the event of a “behind” decision, the defending team loses the advantage of a quick kick out while a video review is conducted.
• The game’s rhythm is upset by the break for video review.
• Video review doesn’t guarantee certainty.

AFL football operations boss Adrian Anderson has announced only minor changes to the open sore that was player-initiated advantage.

Anderson said the slight modification was made after feedback from clubs, players and fans. Well, that may be strictly true, but AussieRulesBlog finds it difficult to imagine that any of the mentioned groups would have agreed to the rule remaining in any form.

Advantage will not apply in 2012 to free kicks paid by an “out-of-zone” umpire. Superficially, this seems like an improvement, but there are plenty of scenarios in games, especially at stoppages at either end of the ground, where two umpires operate in quite close proximity.

The umpires seem to have a fairly good handle on which of them is in control at any point, but for the rest of us it is a mystery.

Most puzzlingly, in 2012 the umpires will have “more time allowed … to consider the actual advantage.”

What? If there’s no advantage, they’ll call the ball back? Certainly, there were any number of incidents during 2011 where this seemed to happen, despite the provision for such action having been removed in the rewriting of the advantage law to allow player-initiated advantage.

The game now finds itself in a position where the lawmakers don’t rewrite a law that doesn’t work. Instead, changes to interpretations — for the most part not codified — are announced, and then the interpretation of the interpretation changes evolve over time as the laws committee and the umpiring administration realise that their initial interpretations are overzealous.

This continual tinkering, especially when it’s not spelled out clearly in a written law, is a crock.

Player-initiated advantage was, and is, a nonsense in Australian rules. It doesn’t work. Players are confused. Umpires are confused. Media are confused. Fans are confused. These changes don’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. It’s still a sow’s ear, no matter how hard the AFL talks it up.

AFL Umpiring boss Jeff Gieschen has been rolled out after the Grand Final to perform his verbal pirouettes again, this time over the goal/behind to the Barcodes’ Sharrod Wellingham. Once more, the spectre of video referrals of goal umpiring decisions has been raised, even though the 2010 pre-season trial of the process was, in AussieRulesBlog’s view, an unmitigated waste of time.

But the big issue we should be focussing on is buried at the end of Gieschen’s statement on the matter. Discussing the process the on-field umpires went through in coming to the decision, he says:

"Our field umpire (Shaun Ryan) actually asked the two boundary umpires, who were both on the posts, what they thought [and] they couldn't add anything.
"He then asked the other field umpires.
"It would have been probably nice if we had gone back to the goal umpire as well."

So, was the decision made by the field umpire or the goal umpire? Why would it have been nice to go back to the goal umpire? Did the field umpire signal All Clear with two hands, suggesting a goal? Did the goal umpire change his decision on that basis?

Regardless, AussieRulesBlog thinks there’s far too much emphasis on mistakes by goal umpires. The error rate is minute. Both Chris Dawes and Tom Hawkins had gimme opportunities to score goals — and missed. Why aren’t we focussing on those incidents?

And if Gieschen is so damned worried about getting it as right as it can possibly be, what about looking at a consistent interpretation and application of the laws of the game from the first bounce of pre-season to the final siren of the Grand Final? Now THAT would be a step forward!

Release the Giesch!!!!!