AussieRulesBlog is not the first commentator to note the propensity of AFL clubs recently to act before guilt has been established. The Saints have taken it to a new level by sacking Andrew Lovett today after a charge of rape was laid against him.

Underlying the Saints’ action is is the assumption that he is guilty — before the charges have been tested in court. In fact, the Saints have taken a fairly aggressive stance with Lovett pretty much from day one: an interesting course considering his somewhat chequered recent past, their trading of a first-round draft pick to secure him and the loss of a onetime club captain.

We make no claim or comment about Lovett’s guilt or innocence. That is the court’s task. But it does seem to us a bit rich for the Saints to have taken the actions they have as the circumstances have unfolded. Scuttlebutt would suggest he didn’t endear himself to the Saints’ playing group in the short time they were together, and that, as much as anything, may be behind much of what is now unfolding — keeping the troops happy.

Every Australian citizen, apart from AFL  and NRL footballers it seems, is entitled to the presumption of innocence, despite the hyperbole of the popular media on an almost daily basis. Why, we wonder, are these footballers a special case? Why can their livelihoods be snatched away at the breath of a scandal?

Lovett was always going to be a high-maintenance project for the Saints. What will they do if he’s not found guilty? Clearly, if that eventuates, they’ll find themselves back in court quick smart defending an action for wrongful dismissal.

We find it rather serendipitous that the first semi-serious hitout for the season should provide such a stark example of the problems inherent in Adrian Anderson’s proposed video referral model.

In the Essendon-West Coast nab Cup game, the ball dribbled toward the goal line and the goal umpire, who had positioned himself straddling the goal line, with his back to the goalpost.

We have no issue with the goalie’s positioning. It’s exactly what we’d expect to maximise his chances of judging when the ball had fully crossed the line.

The ball hit the goalie’s leg and then glanced off to hit the goalpost. The goalie judged that a goal had been scored.

Before the ball was bounced to restart play, either a third goal umpire or one of the field umpires — the commentary team were certainly unsure of the provenance of this decision — overturned the decision, apparently on the basis of a video replay, and the goalie was instructed (we presume) to reverse his decision and award a behind.

There are three issues that are raised by this stream of events. The first concerns the initial decision and its basis. The second concerns the basis for overturning the decision, and the third relates to the circumstances that allowed the decision to be reviewed.

Looking at the initial decision, did the goalie see the whole ball cross the goal line, or did he assume that it would have done so had it not struck his leg? Given the proximity of his head and leg, it seems inconceivable that he didn’t have a good view.

Had the ball fully crossed the goal line before it struck the goalie’s leg, then a goal is the correct decision. Only the goalie knows whether he saw that happen.

If we then turn to the basis for overturning the decision, it was, not to put too fine a point on it, spurious. The angle of the camera didn’t allow a judgement to be made about whether the ball had entirely crossed the goal line at the time that it struck the goalie’s leg. How then can the decision be overturned? The reviewing official, whoever they were, did not have as clear a view as the goalie, and could fairly be said to have had a much worse perspective.

That the ball eventually struck the goalpost is immaterial, yet that seemed to be the basis for overturning the goalie’s decision. Perhaps there was a video feed that wasn’t publicly available, but based on the channel 7 footage shown, there could not have been a foolproof, incontestable basis for overturning the decision.

Thirdly, leaving aside the second issue for the moment and remembering that AussieRulesBlog has made this point before, it was only because the initial decision was to award a goal that there was time to review the decision. Had the ‘erroneous’ decision been to award a behind, there would have been no time to review.

So, the outcome of a game might turn on whether an unwarranted goal is awarded or not. An unwarranted behind simply cannot be reviewed since the laws of the game allow the defending team to kick the ball back into play almost immediately.

We said at the time this video referral process was announced that it was a crock. This first instance serves only to illustrate how right we were!

AussieRulesBlog was hoping the umpires would avoid their traditional rush to over-officiating at the start of the season. The first three games seem to have produced a rather mixed bag.

The Essendon-West Coast game, which we watched on TV in its entirety, was notable for the absence of influence from the umpires, apart from the goal that hit the goalie’s leg before hitting the post (more about this later).

We didn’t see much of the pre-Showdown game so can’t comment on that, but the game in Launceston provided so many of those head shaking moments that it can’t be let alone.

The television commentary team — and Matthew Lloyd was surprisingly good, we thought — were simply nonplussed at times. Even with the benefit of direct audio feed from the whistleblowers, they were often at a loss to understand why a free kick had been paid.

In one standout incident, a free was paid to Hodge for being held as he was tracking toward the contest. The replay revealed his opponent’s arm brushed Hodge’s arm as he ran past! Rather than basing a decision on what he saw, this umpire had assumed. It’s a continuing trait of the Gieschen-led umpiring department that such decision-making processes are not uncommon at the elite level of our game. Notwithstanding Richmond’s  being massively out-classed and therefore more likely to be holding to restrain opponents, the umpires must see the holding before paying the free kick. It cannot be guessed at.

It’s worth noting too that the modified advantage rule has seemed, thus far at least, to be a sensible addition. The players, especially defenders, seem to have a sense of certainty that hasn’t been there in years past.

Essendon’s announcement that Michael Hurley will be suspended for the pre-season period is, it seems to AussieRulesBlog, an attempt to deflect criticism in the wake of Geelong’s suspension of Matthew Stokes.

The similarities are simply that both are facing Police charges which are yet to be heard. The problem for the Bombers is that the pre-season period suspension may be seen to be a lot too little pain for both Hurley and the club.

We have it on what we regard as good authority that Hurley’s indiscretions aren’t at the serious end of the continuum. It would seem on what has occurred to this point that the cabbie wants his day in court though.

To some extent, Essendon will be damned for being too light by some and for being too heavy by others, loyalties and tribal hatreds probably being the dividing line.

AussieRulesBlog is, as an avowed Bombers fan, comfortable with the sanction. It’s appropriate to the scale of the misdemeanour. The club will take heat from many quarters though and may have been better advised, from a purely PR standpoint, to have included one or two home and away games in the sanction.

News released a few days before the commencement of the pre-season competition that some new rules would be trialled has both positive and negative aspects.

It’s a big ask for players to play to one rule or interpretation during the pre-season, and then another when the home and away rounds commence. AussieRulesBlog doesn’t have a better suggestion for trialling changes, but we regard this as an unfortunate consequence of that process.

Empowering boundary umpires to pay free kicks is, in our view, an essentially poorly-conceived notion. There are already considerable problems for players with three interpretations of rules in each game. Why would we want to add a further four interpretations?

The number of off-the-ball free kicks being paid appears to have escalated over recent years. As we have previously noted, television and radio audiences are reasonably well served with either direct audio feed from the officials or a staff member monitoring the direct audio feed and relaying those details to the caller. The paying punter sitting at the ground is quite another matter however.

We have recently taken to simply watching the game rather than watching and listening to the radio calls with all their hyperbole and sensationalism. For those of us taking this option, it’s often quite mystifying why play is stopped, why a free kick was paid and what it was paid for. The AFL seems hell-bent on making changes, but providing better information to paying patrons doesn’t seem to feature on their list of priorities.

We do think the threat of a penalty for players dragging the ball underneath an opponent is a good move. We are heartily sick of players laying under a pack of opponents who are holding the ball to that player being free kicked for not having got rid of the ball. It’s clear to everybody except The Giesch that the player isn’t in possession.

With this new rule, the player in possession makes an attempt to get rid of the ball — no free kick. If the opponent drags the ball back to the player, free kick against the opponent. Good stuff!

Finally, the advantage rule has been a disaster area almost from its inception. We’ve all seen scenarios where almost everyone stops “on the whistle” as they’ve been trained to do and one lucky player has the ball serendipitously fall to them, in space, and there’s a collective groan as the umpire signals advantage.

This trial change seems to remove that gap between the whistle and the umpire’s realisation of advantage. Players will be aware that the ball remains live. What remains to be seen is how The Giesch instructs his blokes to interpret all these factors. When does impeding the player with the free kick finish and advantage begin? Yes, yet another grey area.

As we began, there are mixed blessings.

Usually, at AussieRulesBlog, we confine ourselves to footy and footy-related issues. However the unsavoury rush to report news of Matthew Stokes’ criminal charges has us thinking in more societal terms.

Let us start by recalling that the AFL has a three-strike drugs policy for players caught using recreational or illicit drugs. Briefly, players’ identities are protected until a third offence, giving them a rare chance, in the AFL world at least, of reform without the glare of publicity.

Recently the news media and blogosphere became frantic on reporting that Essendon’s Nathan Lovett-Murray had been picked up by the police for questioning on a drug-related matter. Had officialdom taken any notice of the blogosphere in particular, Lovett-Murray would have been hung, drawn and quartered that very day.

Of course, police later reported they were satisfied that an ecstasy tablet found in Lovett-Murray’s home belonged to someone else.

More recently, the blogosphere rushed to report charges of trafficking against Matthew Stokes. It emerged that Stokes had purchased a small quantity of drugs for a friend and had been caught in a police phone-tapping operation.

Had Stokes used the drug and been caught by the AFL’s testing program, we would be none the wiser.

It is dangerous to engage in applying our everyday notions out of context, but with that caveat in place we should do so.

In our view, ‘trafficking’ represents commercial resale of the substance with the aim of securing an advantage, whether that be in cash or kind. Stokes, it seems to us, did a questionable favour for someone he knew. He didn’t use the substance, nor did he benefit from the transaction (that we know of).

With enough time for sober reflection and fuller details, most of the blogosphere would have moderated their comments on these specific incidents.

AussieRulesBlog consciously does not try to be some sort of unofficial news feed, and doesn’t carry a news feed widget, simply because the sensationalist nature of twenty-first century news often obscures the real story in hyperbole.

Sadly, for those caught up in the news circus, the old adage that if enough mud is thrown some will stick seems to hold true. Blog posts and comments are, to all intents and purposes, permanent and continue to vent their hyperbolic blood lust long after they’ve been forgotten by the writers.

As we noted at the start of this post, these are not uniquely footy-related issues, but symptomatic of a harsher, less caring, more judgemental society, fed on fear by big media desperate for ever more threatening ‘news’ to spark their ratings.

Refreshingly, in February 2010 we are not going to be discussing new or changed rules of the game, but the AFL’s announcement of sanctions for staging for free kicks is mostly welcome.

The major issue, and it’s not of the AFL’s making (this time), will be misunderstanding of the definition of staging. Already, on the back page of Age Sport, Martin Blake has singled out a list of stagers.

What is abundantly clear from the AFL’s explanatory video is that these sanctions are directed at players who exaggerate the impact of a physical confrontation — falling like autumn leaves might be an apt description.

Since it is only with the particular perspective and clarity of TV cameras and slow-motion replays that many of these acts of staging become fully apparent, it would seem that it will be the match review panel, rather than the field umpires, doing most of the heavy lifting on this issue

Blake’s list of stagers features seven players who exaggerate(d) defensive contact infringements against them (Wanganeen, Lloyd, Brent Harvey, Fevola, Leon Davis, Milne, Monfries). This is a wholly inaccurate representation of the intent of the AFL’s anti-staging position.

Even worse, The Age is running an online vote for the worst stagers, having at least partly misrepresented the AFL’s position.

Lest there be confusion, let us make clear that the incidents in the AFL video do not involve exaggerating a push in the back or falling in the act of marking in an effort to bring the defender into infringing contact. Whilst we would agree that the game might be better without this type of action, it is not covered under the new system.

It is disingenuous of The Age and of Martin Blake to imply that the listed players are ‘stagers’ under the AFL’s definition.

Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between staging and diving, although colloquially they are all but interchangeable.

Less controversial will be the upgrading of so-called ‘spear tackles’ to reportable offence status. It will be interesting to see what the umpires, match review panel and the tribunal consider to be a spear tackle.

Aussierulesblog can forsee a further development of the spear tackle ban being the tackle where a player’s shoulder is intentionally ground into the playing surface in a tackle. Remember, you read it here first!

Oh, thank goodness the tennis has finally finished, yachting is done for the summer and cricket is left only to pore over the dregs with a quick and dirty T20 mini series.

Aussie rules was actually on page 2 of Age Sport today! And almost a full page too!

Wednesday the Bombers have their first semi-serious hitout with an intra-club effort in Shepparton, and the following Friday they’re in Perth for the first pre-season comp game.

Oh, it’s been such a looong summer! It’ll be so good to have you back, footy!!