Umpiring

Are they?

  • Yes

    Votes: 52 49.5%
  • No

    Votes: 17 16.2%
  • They will until this group has officially been broken, Hardwick aint Coach and Gale isn't CEO

    Votes: 36 34.3%

  • Total voters
    105

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The AFL has no idea of looking ahead. They are loosing fans because of what tbey call umpiring - LOL. Take away the die hard fans and lotal supporters and you then start to loose the next generation of supporters that would come through.
Local clubs and auskick have lost too many kids with the covid crisis. Add the umpiring garbage on top of that and our great game is on a downward spiral. We loose the kids in football and then we loose the talent pool and the game will be worse off.
Local footy is a lot easier to watch these days, as it is more like the way footy should be played. Only issue is AFL also influences local leagues with some of there stupid rules. In my eyes go back to basic decisions & let the game work its own path into the future.
If people don't attend AFL games, the sponsorship dollar will fall, then so will player payments & will flow through to footy departments. If that was to happen, then you will have a second rate competition. Unfortunately the ones at the top are arrogant & way to stubborn to listen to supporters anymore, that also includes the so called media.
 
The AFL has no idea of looking ahead. They are loosing fans because of what tbey call umpiring - LOL. Take away the die hard fans and lotal supporters and you then start to loose the next generation of supporters that would come through.
Local clubs and auskick have lost too many kids with the covid crisis. Add the umpiring garbage on top of that and our great game is on a downward spiral. We loose the kids in football and then we loose the talent pool and the game will be worse off.
it was already on a downward spiral with the younger generation before the stand rule and other crap came in

its the cherry on top ! rip to our great game. they wont ever recover from this. when the middle aged- older campaigners die off they will be playing to 10k crowds if theyre lucky !! even if they reverse the rule changes I fear it might be too late
 
Competition rules encourage as blatant staging/diving as you can muster because you at worst don't get a free kick, but If you do get the free, the more blatant your cheating the more likely your opponent is going to have an involuntary 'what the ****' reaction and give up a 50.

This was such an obvious consequence of the change that its hard for me to not think it was deliberate.

**** this competition is in terrible shape.
 

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Local footy is a lot easier to watch these days, as it is more like the way footy should be played. Only issue is AFL also influences local leagues with some of there stupid rules. In my eyes go back to basic decisions & let the game work its own path into the future.
If people don't attend AFL games, the sponsorship dollar will fall, then so will player payments & will flow through to footy departments. If that was to happen, then you will have a second rate competition. Unfortunately the ones at the top are arrogant & way to stubborn to listen to supporters anymore, that also includes the so called media.
100% agreement. Unfortuntley a lot of people are slow to see the issue exactly as you have described
 
So if a free kick is paid and the offending team puts their arms out in protest but the umpire hesitates to give a 50, then the team who won the free kick puts their arms out in protest at the 50 not being paid, does the umpire reverse the free kick for umpire dissent?

50 against whichever team is richmond otherwise play on
 
Boycott the matches.

It's not an overreaction - our game is in a death spiral, it's unrecognisable and the AFL are out of control.

I know you'll argue that a boycott will hurt Richmond but the end justifies the means. Empty stadiums is how we're heard - all fans of all clubs should unite in this.

#boycottAFL
That would hurt the clubs more than the AFL

AFL gets its money from the television broadcast deals not fans attending games
Hence the rolling fixtures that a designed to maximise tv ratings by showing in form teams in the best time slots for tv
 
That would hurt the clubs more than the AFL

AFL gets its money from the television broadcast deals not fans attending games
Hence the rolling fixtures that a designed to maximise tv ratings by showing in form teams in the best time slots for tv
I agree that broadcasting deals are a huge factor. But make no mistake about it, the AFL are all about optics and do not want empty stadiums. It's not good for future TV deals, sponsorships or their brand.

It won't hurt the clubs as much as you think, the AFL just bail out any struggling clubs (equalisation tax), so it all comes back to house money.

Personally, I feel like I'm being played by spending money going to matches and will not go to another Richmond game. Mind you, I've barely missed a game for 10+ years.
 
So if a free kick is paid and the offending team puts their arms out in protest but the umpire hesitates to give a 50, then the team who won the free kick puts their arms out in protest at the 50 not being paid, does the umpire reverse the free kick for umpire dissent?

According to Brad Scott, that will depend on the Umpire (yep, that's what he said) - and that my friends is where the whole sorry mess begins.

Brad, in the space of a sentence or two referred to both dissent and demonstrative dissent, as the reason for free kicks AND a 50m penalty, but are they really any different..... Dissent is a verb:

hold or express opinions that are at variance with those commonly or officially held.​
"two members dissented from the majority"​

Whilst Brad made it sound like some sort of a bad thing, dissent of itself is not anything more than "I choose to disagree with you". Go a day of your life not dissenting with something or other - if you can! Now we don't usually use dissent in our everyday language, like, "5 XXXX's boys?", and 4 agree but if someone wants a VB instead, he doesn't say, "I dissent to that". So we don't describe it as dissent for run-of-the-mill disagreements. But, that is what it is. Common day dissent usually refers to a more formal difference of opinion, as with a political majority or government policy. So is footy a formal difference of opinion? - I think not.

Brad, in his Presser, also made the distinction of Demonstrative Dissent, almost as an attempt to justify basic dissent as something bad with demonstrative dissent even worse, that has escalating qualities that are beyond reasonable argument. Yet it can be nothing more than an act of holding out two arms, like we saw Brisbane defender Harris Andrews do - a demonstrated or demonstrative dissent. So if you and I didn't like - too bad - Brad does!

Unfortunately for Brad, Dissent and Demonstrative Dissent's meaning often depends on a particular frame of reference and cannot be understood without context. Emotion, Brad effectively said, is not context. Um, footy is 50% emotion - is Brad forgetting his pre-game messages, his half time emotional pleas to players, his emotional out-pourings at Brisbane.

I think where Brad has it all wrong is that he is confusing dissent with protest. He should not.

While dissent also means that you stand in opposition to something (how is that bit of irony given the Stand Rule being shouted at you as a Player), protesting takes even more action. For example, you may dissent to an Umpire's call against you by holding out two arms to the Umpire about your objections, and, after they refuse to make allowances, you might decide to do something more in protest, like yelling "are you effing blind". I would argue the protest is the act deserving an additional penalty, not the initial dissent.

Brad is just the AFL's message bearer. Not a great one because frankly it paints him as hypocrite based on his own playing and coaching career, though the AFL might argue, "behold a reformer, this then must be right!"

I certainly won't support it for a 50m penalty just for disagreeing to an Umpire who has just publicly called out a Player for a wrong doing in front of 50,000 plus people (unless it's a Norf game - 10,000plus).

Occasional dissent is a healthy out-pour moment, it lasts a second usually, it's not personal and the game moves on. I say this as a once-was Umpire and Referee in a number of sports. Save the penalty for when the Umpire really needs it. There is scope of escalating penalties, first 15m (minimum kick distance and it might help umpires understand the estimate of the distance better which can only help the game), then a 25m, then a 50m and frankly at that stage it is more likely reportable.

A better approach is to make these people professional and train them to be able to cope better with these nuances. The professional footballer today has too much at stake to be subjected to a rather feeble part-time mind set. Both ought to be strong and rigorous. I don't recall seeing or hearing Jordan Bannister, Mark Fraser or Leigh Fisher complaining about a little dissent. Perhaps the truth of the matter lays somewhere in the middle, where best decisions usually find the best support.

Whatever the outcome in the years ahead, I won't care, because I simply no longer care about AFL - the game is not the same! It's not fun. It is actually frustrating to watch, and I mean any game, including non-Richmond games. I won't go to a game now. I turn now off the TV when a 50m is applied to the Stand Rule or the Protect Zone infraction. Frankly I have better things to do with my time than to watch little men/women not cope with the very real nuances of a strong and physical game yelling at players to Stand still.
 
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Boycott the matches.

It's not an overreaction - our game is in a death spiral, it's unrecognisable and the AFL are out of control.

I know you'll argue that a boycott will hurt Richmond but the end justifies the means. Empty stadiums is how we're heard - all fans of all clubs should unite in this.

#boycottAFL
I’ve been saying this for a long time, and don’t watch it on tv let c7 knife the campaigners
 
the onıy rational way to stop the hands out issue to stop the poor little men in green from getting their poor little feelings hurt is for all player a to have their arms amputated. That'll fix it...
 

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Is it possible to see a stat for how many frees for/against result in direct shots at goal? Was chatting to my Dad on Sunday and he said he did his best not to get angry watching the game on Saturday, but it's not just the 20 free kick differential, it's where they keep paying them to the opposition when we are missing out ourselves.

So yeah would be curious to see how often those calls are made in front of goal against us. Most of Carlton's round 1 momentum in that last quarter, for example, came from frees, 50s, and a couple of non-calls our way too.

Cornes had it right though, the game is f’ed, I honestly feel the same in that every time there's a contest, the whistle will go.
I made a thread on this last season - but it was total goals for and against due to frees, rather than shots on goal.

 
Local footy is a lot easier to watch these days, as it is more like the way footy should be played. Only issue is AFL also influences local leagues with some of there stupid rules. In my eyes go back to basic decisions & let the game work its own path into the future.

An umpire from a local league called in on 3AW and was adamant that he never pays a 50m for putting your arms out, he doesn't pay all the free kicks that the AFL umpires pay and doesn't pay a 50m for people over the mark, he just blows his whistle again and calls them back to the mark. He said he's goal is to keep the game flowing freely, not to keep holding it up by paying numerous free kicks. The rules are that he could pay a free kick nearly every time players go near the ball, which he thinks is wrong. He also said that what the AFL is doing is making it worse for local umpires not better. So there you have it from the horses mouth so to speak.
 
An umpire from a local league called in on 3AW and was adamant that he never pays a 50m for putting your arms out, he doesn't pay all the free kicks that the AFL umpires pay and doesn't pay a 50m for people over the mark, he just blows his whistle again and calls them back to the mark. He said he's goal is to keep the game flowing freely, not to keep holding it up by paying numerous free kicks. The rules are that he could pay a free kick nearly every time players go near the ball, which he thinks is wrong. He also said that what the AFL is doing is making it worse for local umpires not better. So there you have it from the horses mouth so to speak.
Good on him.

This for me is the heart of the issue. The umpires in the AFL want to be centre stage and have a 'profile', be known by name etc. They don't want to cop criticism however and in my view you can't do both.

The ridiculous rule changes make the game impossible to umpire and unduly influence the game to an extent where it previously did not. The fact that the whole week we're talking about umpiring when we should be talking about footy is indicative of the whole issue.

The AFL have really backed themselves into a corner. Their inability to come to terms with the fact that the experimental manner in which they treat the game has backfired will see the code lose traction to games like Rugby and Soccer that don't change the rules every three minutes.
 
Of course the AFL was only ever going to come out and say the 50s were justified. But honestly, no sanction on Tom Hawkins basically sends the message that it’s ok to stage for frees, and that winning the game via milking free kicks is now a viable strategy. You can see it even with our players — Nank clearly baited Tex for the 50 on the weekend.

Honestly, I might still watch our games but I think we will remember 2019 premiership as the peak from which everything went to sh*t, accelerated by Covid, which gave the AFL the impression they could and should have a far reaching interventionist approach to everything.

Unless the new CEO takes a more hands off approach and loosens things up, I’m afraid it’s curtains for our great game. Matches now focus on which decisions the umpire makes rather than the intensity of the contest; the umpires have at least as much influence on the outcome as the players.

Net result is a lot of long time multi decade fans turned off by the money grubbing shitshow it’s become. It’s disgusting
 
So if a free kick is paid and the offending team puts their arms out in protest but the umpire hesitates to give a 50, then the team who won the free kick puts their arms out in protest at the 50 not being paid, does the umpire reverse the free kick for umpire dissent?
think u r trying to overcomplicate. hate the over reaction by the a.f.l but it is what it is. just don't put your arms out. at least it's black and white.

b interesting to c the reaction if a player just puts his hands on his head.
 
Look I’m gonna be honest there is some bias, but we have THE worst tackling technique in the game. We constantly give away highs, 50s chop arms and in the backs, I mean Pickett legit aims for people’s heads and doesn’t seem to care about giving away the free. Idk why we don’t put some more training into this, our players seem to have massive brain fades often.


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
 
View attachment 1378833
How does all sides mysteriously not infringe against us,this graph illustrates the bias
This graph shows us absolutely nothing. The top graph shows free kicks for are about 17.5 - 20.5 per team and the bottom one shows the same. In fact if you put the same scale on the top one as the bottom then the difference would be more stark on frees against.
 

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