From SEN:Umpire Dean Margetts has explained the holding the ball rule, which has caused plenty of consternation among footy fans in recent weeks.
“There’s a lot of different cues for holding the ball,” he said on SEN WA’s Sporting Goss.
“The perfect tackle doesn’t mean it is a free kick. If I haven’t had prior opportunity and I get tackled, all I have to do is make a genuine attempt to handball or kick. If I miss that, it’s play on.
“If there’s no prior opportunity we must then see a genuine attempt to dispose (of the ball). If we see that, it will be play on.”
Specifically touching on some 360 and even 720-degree tackles which were judged as play on, Margetts added: “The rule is, have you had reasonable time?"
“If we deem the 360 to be reasonable time, which I don’t think it is… There was (also) a 720, but it happens really quickly.
“It’s an interpretational decision. My concern is, and I heard a lot of social media after Dreamtime that we might have got a couple of decisions incorrect, but it’s generally the way people want it umpired, not the way umpires are instructed to umpire.
“As I say, there are so many cues. Prior opportunity, illegal disposal, have you dived on the ball, is the tackle legal, and this is all happening in a split second.
“It’s very easy in your comfy chair at home to go, ‘oh, that’s a poor decision’, but I’d love to take people on a little two-minute tour of an AFL game just to get an idea of it. I’m not making excuses for errors, but it is a lot more difficult than what people may think.
“Don’t criticise the umpire because we’re educated and we’re paid to get it right.”
The veteran umpire also gave an insight into the officiating of the incorrect disposal rule.
“It must be an illegal disposal, so that’s a clenched fist or anything below the knee,” he said further.
“It’s the prior opportunity or no prior opportunity that comes into it. If I’ve picked up the ball and had a bounce and then I get tackled, if I get even a little toe to it, that’s deemed a legal disposal.
“To the people in the back row at Optus, they’re going that’s holding the ball, but he’s still actually physically kicked the ball.
“If it misses my boot, 100 per cent that’s holding the ball. What people forget is a little ‘clenched-fister’ is actually a legal disposal. You can’t pay a free kick for that.”
https://www.sen.com.au/news/2021/06/10/umpire-margetts-explains-holding-the-ball-rule-following-dreamtime-confusion/
