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jmac70
On the porch
McRae was frustrated and let his emotions get the best of him. I can’t recall him ever criticising the umpires in the past.(1) Fly isn’t being silenced. All clubs are totally free to unload on any aspect of the AFL - it just needs to be done behind closed doors and not in the public domain.
(2) Fly unloading in the public domain doesn’t help anyone. You now have a large portion of a large supporter base who have heard it implied by the senior coach that their team missed out on finals because of a poor umpiring decision. We were 5 goals up with 15 mins to play. We missed a bunch of dolly set shots throughout the game. We missed a bunch of straightforward handball chains. We had some players who were playing well below their best. WTF are we finding a reason to blame the umpires? We should be taking responsibility for the loss - isn’t that the first step to us getting better? I could understand why the AFL would be miffed by this.
Other coaches like Chris Scott seem to do it quite regularly.