AFL goes to the video for goal umpire decisions
Rohan Connolly | October 15, 2009
THE AFL is seriously considering the introduction of technology to assist goal-umpiring decisions after a disputed goal to Geelong's Tom Hawkins in last month's grand final almost left the league with a major controversy on its hands.
Hawkins' quick snap on goal at the Punt Road end of the MCG in the second quarter of the grand final was incorrectly called a goal despite glancing off the goal post. Fortunately for the AFL, Max Rooke's post-siren goal made the margin 12 points and spared it a kerfuffle which would have overshadowed the game.
But the near-thing appears to have inspired action, AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson last night confirming the league was investigating the potential use of television footage as an aid to avoid further similar mistakes.
''We've been looking at the idea of whether the umpires' coaches in the umpires' coach's box, who have access to the TV footage, can talk down direct to the goal umpire, for example,'' Anderson said on 3AW's Sports Today.
''We're certainly open-minded to using some form of simple technological assistance that would not interrupt the flow of the game. We certainly don't want to go down the track of unnecessarily and repeatedly slowing things up.''
Anderson, however, ruled out the introduction of an extra goal umpire at either end to help make better decisions, pointing out that there had been only three confirmed scoring errors for the 2009 AFL season.
''I think four [goal umpires] really would be inappropriate, because there would be an enormous cost to the game that would otherwise go into the clubs and into grass roots, and they could still make a mistake,'' he said. ''I think we need to look at something simpler, I think four would be overkill.
''What we had this year was the lowest number of scoring errors we've ever had, three confirmed scoring errors from several thousand scoring shots over the course of the season. What helped there was having four boundary umpires, that get back on the point post and help out the goal umpire. Unfortunately, one of those three errors was in the grand final.''
Anderson said the AFL was looking towards American football to help it find the right sort of system to assist contentious goal-umpiring calls.
''The NFL use match footage from the broadcaster,'' he said. ''Obviously, their game is a lot more stop-start, and we don't want to go down that track, but what they do do with the umpiring sometimes is if something comes up on the match footage which they can correct, like a scoring situation, then it doesn't necessarily slow things down too much. That's what we're having a look at.''
Anderson said the AFL also was keeping a close watch on the numbers of interchanges being made during games, following a dramatic spike in interchange numbers during the course of the 2009 season.
The average number of changes per team was in the low 80s after five rounds this season, but had crept up over 100 by the finals. Collingwood was the AFL's leading interchanger, making as many as 131 changes off the bench in round 20, well over one each minute of play.
Anderson said there were several issues which had to be considered. ''One is about whether there's a potential for it to be causing more injuries. We've seen quite a few soft-tissue injuries, hamstrings, in the last couple of years, as interchange has gone through the roof, and players are going at high speeds. The other things are like less one-on-one contests, does it make the game more defensive, tackles also going through the roof, the ability of players to cover more ground while they're out there."
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews/afl-may-have-tv-umpires/2009/10/14/1255195830115.html
