AFL’s flawed media process simply adding to decision confusion

I don’t think the AFL did anyone any favours yesterday pretending a 50-metre penalty shouldn’t have been paid to Bailey Scott at the climax of Sunday’s thriller between Collingwood and North Melbourne.

It had an air of the worst quality from the Howard Years – it felt tricky.

I’m running a theory… see what you think…

There have been a cluster of defining umpiring decisions at the most pivotal moments of close games this season. Some represent intervention, some inaction.

In choosing what to acknowledge as error and what to justify, the AFL has isolated each incident and applied the most technical reading of a rule to come to the conclusion it wants to disseminate.

That is a flawed process and I wonder if it’s not adding to the problem.

There’s only two questions that should be consistently applied: What does the game require in that moment and what does the coaching demand?

This isn’t impressionist painting or interpretive dance. It’s a rule book with necessary interpretation to be applied.

To find a technicality by which you could say a 50-metre penalty shouldn’t have been paid to Scott undermines every other decision to award the penalty when players run over the mark.

To find a technicality by which you could say Elliot Yeo dragged the ball in underneath his body undermines every other instance when a player takes possession of a loose ball on the ground.

You can find it in all these flash points whether it’s not paying advantage, dissent or knocking the ball out at the end of the spoiling attempt.

Technically justifying these decisions is tricky and it provides reinforcement to those making the calls that either decision will do.

The objective is surely to attempt unform decision making in the quest for correct decision making.

If this is the tightest season we’ve had with the number of games coming down to the wire more than ever… such decisions have never mattered more.

There should be a desire, indeed a demand, to get these calls right, not to technically explain them away on Mondays.

“It was a confusing situation,” Laura Kane explained on Monday.

“I understand why people are confused and left wanting to understand what exactly happened. As you can see on the vision, Bailey Scott takes a mark, the umpire blows his whistle and one of two calls could be made – it could be play on immediately or it could be ‘Stand’.

“Neither of those two calls occur in the immediate moments after the whistle was blown and Bailey takes four steps inbound and looks to play on, so the correct call should have been play on initially.

“That has caused confusion for players in the immediate vicinity and the Collingwood players because of the delayed whistle and that communication was the error.

“The important part for the umpire is that they have control of the situation and regaining control of the situation.”

OR… ‘That is an automatic and instantly recognizable 50 metre penalty. We expect it to be paid and we will coach it accordingly’.

And This idea that we’ll be comfortable either way with a decision doesn’t wash.

What is the consistent approach, what does the game require and what do the instructions demand? That’s the process that should have been followed.

Not ‘either decision will do’.

“We were happy with the process. I understand how you could get to either outcome, but their job is to make a decision and they’ve made one that’s backed in the umpire feeling in the moment.

“They didn’t have a definitive image to overturn the call.”

OR… ‘If a bent finger is the threshold to overturn goals then a bent finger is the threshold to overturn goals. We expect it to be consistently applied in each of those instances’.

This isn’t impressionist painting and interpretive dance where anything will wash.