Ball...............No thank you......

I’m not a redneck or a bogan and I don’t insist players ‘kick it long’ and I don't call out ‘deliberate’ and I don’t think footy was better in my day. This being my day though I’m quite far away. I love a ‘ball…yeah’ as much as any other bloke in the outer. I went to a game in Sydney once and they don’t know how to do a ‘ball…yeah’ and for that they are ignorant and maybe that’s why the game may never catch on in that strange and detached city. A ‘ball…yeah’ is like a good root in that sometimes you have to earn it and wait for it and it’s all the more better for the wait. Mostly it doesn’t come easily. Though you may. But things are changing. Change for the sake of change being the mantra of the AFL.

Being a fly on the wall down at umpire ‘training’ (think the biggest bunch of nerds and bullied kids ever) could make for some pretty disturbing viewing. I guess they spend the first half of training trying to remember players’ names and then thinking of nicknames so they can act like the players are their mates. The umpires clearly have no mates and that is why they became umpires. Umpiring is like the law in that it’s enforcement should be detached and consistent but always based around discretion and reason. For this reason umpires should be ice cold and faceless zombies and then they may get the respect they so deeply want.

Consistency is something the fans and players have always yearned for. But it is like a decent shag we all want it but rarely get it. When the AFL at one stage decided that in certain rounds the umpires would concentrate on the enforcement of certain rules (being ‘red hot’ on said rule) the idea of consistency became even more unrealistic. How can umpires be consistent if they admit that they will change the focus of the rules from week to week?

Even worse, the discretion of umpires is slowly being abolished, and rules are being enforced that surely are not in the spirit of the game. The second half of umpire training must surely involve studying and finding new ways to confuse the ‘holding the ball’ rule. The amount of ‘ball…yeahs’ getting paid in round one was quite breathtaking. Do umpires have to fill a quota of ‘ball…yeahs’? Is the ball-up a plague on our game like flooding and tunneling before it? If a player goes for a loose ball, picks it up, gets slung to the ground and then has five players jump on him, is that considered prior opportunity? How can he dispose of the ball correctly if he is semi-conscious? Punishing the player ‘making the play’ is not in the spirit of the game and this obsession with paying holding the ball free kicks has to be stopped. If you were an AFL players perhaps it would be wiser to avoid picking up a loose ball. Simply wait for your opponent to possess it then tackle him and wait for the idiots in the crowd to scream ‘ball…’. The idiot in white will surely oblige.

Good football rules are like decent laws in that they should respect history and democracy and take into accont the viewpoints of all stakeholders. A good law is rarely thought up by a few men in a room without the consultation of the people it will affect.