We have to wonder about the AFL. Not so long ago, they bent every effort to make the game faster and more continuous, most particularly with immediate kick-ins after behinds. Now, we’re told, the game is running too long.

Mark Stevens, in the Hun, even makes the extraordinary inference that fans might find a game of kick-to-kick fits into their schedules better — “… other sports are looking at shortened formats to keep fans interested, with cricket’s most popular form now Twenty20.” Seriously, is two and a half hours too long for the modern fan to concentrate?

“The real driver is the fans,” says Adrian Anderson. Well, Ando, old mate, what about undoing the immediate kick-in for  start? There’s a way to give players a rest during the game! Some of we fans could do with that rest too!

We’ve not finished groaning about the missed shot for goal when the ball is being rushed at breakneck speed through the opposition half-forward line, with our players haring back in desperate pursuit. We could do with a bit less of that.

But at a more basic level, Ando, it was the changes you blokes brought in that have created this hydra-headed monster. Rather than making more changes, have you considered winding a few of the recent changes back a bit?

And can we (not so) respectfully suggest to Ross Lyon that if he wants two 45-minute halves, he might be better suited to apply for Craig Bellamy’s job. Changing ends less frequently doesn’t bother the british bulldog blokes so much: if the ball’s in the air to be caught by a passing gale, it’s more likely been fumbled by someone than anything else.

You have to remember, Adrian, that footy is a little bit like climate change. You poke a bit more carbon dioxide into the air and it makes a subtle change that you don’t see for fifty years. In the meantime, you didn’t notice a change, so more carbon dioxide obviously wasn’t a problem. Then, by the time you realise carbon dioxide is a BIG problem, we’re all addicted to the stuff and we can’t turn the taps off. And the first lot of changes will now be affected even more by new sets of changes, and so on.

Every extra change we make to footy makes the game as a whole more like a chaotic weather system. No-one knows how the next lot of changes will turn out because the game is still digesting the changes for five to ten years ago.

We here at AussieRulesBlog have long held that umpires make some decisions based on guesswork. We had intuited this on the basis of a lifetime’s worth of football spectating.

Last Saturday evening, watching the last quarter of the North-Essendon game from an unaccustomed seven rows behind the fence, we saw Mark McVeigh fighting hard to gain possession of the ball and pulled to the ground with his back to the umpire. We know this because we were right on the umpire’s line of sight, so we were seeing pretty much exactly what the umpire was seeing.

We couldn’t see the ball. We didn’t know whether McVeigh still had the ball or whether a North opponent had taken it from him as they were surrounded by as many as fifteen players and buried under another four or five, with McVeigh still lying on the ground with his back to the umpire.

So the picture here is a confused tangle of bodies where we cannot be sure of the location — or possession — of the ball.

You know already, dear Reader, what happened next, don’t you? The umpire slowly brought the whistle to his mouth, blew a long blast and then made that awful sweeping gesture to indicate a free kick against McVeigh for not having disposed of the ball correctly.

So, the umpire either guessed, or is possessed of x-ray vision.

Either way, it’s not appropriate to make decisions on that basis.

Fresh from our mid-season R&R, AussieRulesBlog watched the Saints-Hawks game on television with renewed interest. The mixed blessing of access to the umpires’ audio feed provoked a number of questions.

Time to kick

Not for the first time, we noticed that a defender gets barely five seconds to compose himself and plan his kick before an officious voice (imagination required for Steve McBurney here) solemnly intones, “Move it along; play on!” and the umpire does a comical impression of an albatross taking off.

As the ball moves further toward the attacking goal, players seem to get more and more time.

Once there is a shot for goal involved, in contrast, the time allowed magically expands to twenty seconds before the player is called to start moving.

No doubt The Mikado (Jeff Gieschen, for those who haven’t followed the Gilbert and Sullivan association threads) will remind us that goals are important in the game and that players should have a reasonable chance to maximise the effectiveness of their kicks. Nor argument from us there, except that it’s reasonable to apply the same rule across the whole field.

‘Natural arc’ and moving off the line

An umpire in the aforementioned Saints-Hawks game penalised Leigh Montagna for taking a step toward Franklin who had run substantially off his line in taking a kick. The umpire did not call “play on!”, so we have no difficulty with the decision.

What did puzzle us though, was the explanation offered to Montagna by the umpire — that Franklin’s “natural arc” saved him from a play on call. Now, we wonder how much natural arc is allowed. If the Grand Final final siren has sounded and the Hawks are down five points with Franklin taking a kick from the right-hand behind post (that is, the behind post is on Franklin’s right side), how much natural arc will be allowed before “Play on!” is called and the match finishes before the kick is taken?

Once again, by way of contrast, some defenders seem to do little more than raise an eyebrow before being called to play on.

Five-metre zone

We also noticed that Hawthorn have modified the Collingwood tactic of blocking the man on the mark to facilitate a play on move. The Hawks’ method involves stationing someone fairly close to the mark who can quickly come in and block as soon as “Play on!” is called. Invariably, in our observation, the blocking player is within five metres of the player on the mark. When 50-metre penalties are being almost routinely awarded for players infringing the five-metre protected zone, it seems the umpires aren’t a wake-up to this variation on tactics.

After a week of mid-season R&R enjoying the sun in Merimbula — and missing the Akermanis sacking media blitz — AussieRulesBlog sat down to watch the St Kilda-Hawthorn game.

What a cracker of a game, with the draw being a fitting result that reduced the over-zealous umpiring effect to minimal.

Of greater interest were the armbands worn by each club. We’ve searched high and low this morning, but we can’t find any AFL statement changing their “black armband only” policy, laid down when Essendon first proposed the Call to Arms game to support cancer research and asked permission for both clubs to wear yellow armbands. Not possible said the AFL at the time; allow yellow and there’d be a flood of applications for armbands of many and varied hues.

The Saints and the Hawks playing for the Tynan-Eyre Cup each year is a fitting way to remind the community of the danger that our Police face on a daily basis, but the Police check armband isn’t black.

As best AussieRulesBlog can ascertain, Corey Bowen, the first-time AFL umpire at the centre of the controversy over five first-half 50-metre penalties resulting in goals to Melbourne in Round 15, did not get an AFL game in round 16.

This despite AFL umpiring boss Jeff Gieschen's assurances, on Monday night on One Week at a Time on OneHD, that all these decisions were correct.

It's not too big a stretch of the imagination to suspect that Bowen has been sent back to lower grades, but is it a punishment?

Were Gieschen's assurances worth the air expelled in uttering them, surely Bowen would have been assigned to another game, if nothing else, to dissuade those of us who might assume otherwise.

We also note that most of the decisions paid by Bowen in round 15 have not been copied by umpires in round 16. Funny that, but of course, according to Gieschen, there can be no question of the umpires deviating from the DVD interpretations distributed at the commencement of the season.

More utter nonsense from the AFL's king of spin! Gieschen must go!

We’re watching Jeff Gieschen on One Week at a Time on OneHD.

We don’t have a special focus from one week to another, says Gieschen. All we’re doing is umpiring to the DVD issued at the start of the season, says Gieschen.

Jeff, go down to the back corner of your garden, take a picture of the fairies and email it back to us!

Wanker!

Can it be that Ross Lyon is complaining that returning star Nick Riewoldt received too much physical attention from opponents?

What????

Is this the same Ross Lyon who coaches St Kilda, the team that serial pest and convicted star terroriser Steven Baker plays for?

We know that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, but this is bordering on the absurd.

It was only two weeks ago that Baker was assaulting Steve Johnson. Would Lyon have us believe that Baker took it upon himself to badger Johnson in that way? Does he seriously imagine that we could think those actions weren’t at least tacitly approved by himself?

Pull the other one, Ross, it plays Jingle Bells!

Five first-half 50-metre penalty goals to the Demons in their game against Essendon — all of them technically “there” perhaps, all of them severe and over-zealous interpretations on even the most charitable assessment and counter to the generally prevailing interpretations for the rest of the season and, without having the benefit of checking the replay yet, all of them the work of one umpire it seemed — accounted for the Demons lead at half time.

It matters not that the Demons looked the better team and deserved to win. If it were not already obvious, the application and severity of the 50-metre penalty must be reassessed.

As best AussieRulesBlog can determine, the umpire involved, Corey Bowen, was umpiring his first AFL game. Despite our deep frustration, we understand that nervousness on the big stage for the first time could lead to over-zealous officiating. Hopefully, he will learn from the experience, but the AFL must also learn the lesson that a blanket reliance on 50-metre penalties is damaging the game.

AussieRulesBlog is happy to concede that 50 metres is appropriate for deliberate and clearly-obvious time-wasting or for deliberate violence.

Interchange infringements seem to us to be pretty minor in the spectrum of offences. If a team has an extra player on the field due to sloppy interchanging and either that player is involved in the play or is on the field for more than, say, five seconds, we’re happy with a 50-metre penalty. If those conditions are not met, forget it.

Offences at the mark should be dependant on whether the umpire has set the mark. If a player runs over the mark immediately subsequent to a legitimate attempt to spoil, carried there by his momentum, providing he immediately attempts to take up a more realistic mark and moves backward to assume a more realistic position, no penalty should be applied. An umpire could adjust that positioning without penalty, provided reasonable instructions were obeyed.

We are all for penalising players who intentionally drag down a player who has marked, if the tackling player was not in the marking contest. This does constitute time wasting and the 50-metre penalty is appropriate.

If, however, the players are involved in a contest for the mark, that is, they are touching or almost touching each other, regardless of whether the defending player actually makes contact with the ball, the tackling/defending player is not wasting time, but competing for the ball. Applying a 50-metre penalty in these circumstances reduces Aussie rules to a game of netball.

As custodians of the game, it is incumbent on the AFL to introduce a lesser penalty — perhaps 25 metres — for some lesser-severity offences. The lesser penalty may also reduce the impact of incorrect decisions.

We would also hope that umpires beginning their senior AFL careers might be past nervousness.