A turkey of a rule comes home to roost
Rohan Connolly | May 28, 2007 | The Age
Saturday night's free-kick controversy is the latest indictment upon a ruling that AFL administrators should never have tinkered with.
YES, to the letter of the law it was a free kick. No, in the spirit of the game it shouldn't have been. And yes, this hands-in-the-back stuff is a turkey. One that came home to roost at the MCG on Saturday night.
As if this season hadn't already seen enough attention diverted from the playing field. Now even the games themselves are sinking into a mire of endless controversy and debate about their adjudication, thanks largely to tinkering with a rule that didn't need attention in the first place. And that's the greatest shame.
Essendon's comeback win over Richmond was overflowing with great stories and incidents. Matthew Richardson's mere appearance on the field for the Tigers — given the extent of his injuries the previous week — was a pretty good starting point.
The Dreamtime concept again captured the football public's imagination and helped turn what might otherwise have been an insignificant match between two struggling teams into a real occasion.
The winless Tigers were gallant again, but in a sorry twist just couldn't finish off their opponent. The Bombers' effort in hauling back a three-goal deficit with just over six minutes to play was a stunning comeback. There was James Hird's inspirational tackle. Adam McPhee's thumping goal that tied the scores. No end of talking points.
But they were always going to be overshadowed once umpire Brett Allen pinged "Richo" for the lightest of touches on Mal Michael's back, denying him what would most likely have been a famous match-winning goal.
Every week, there seems at least one match whose outcome is overshadowed by the inconsistencies of the application of this new interpretation.
Last week, the Kangaroos and Carlton played a cracker returning 42 goals, but post-match discussion focused just as much on several scored from hands-in-the-back free kicks. Essendon's Mark McVeigh's great grab in round three against Carlton is to date probably mark of the year. But even a moment that spectacular became just a catalyst for another week-long debate about this silly piece of unwanted rules engineering.
We know it's not the umpires' fault, though the 50-metre penalty Brett Allen slapped on Richardson to add insult to injury was a shocker. Play was frantic, scores level, seconds were ticking away and a 60,000-plus crowd was screaming. If Richardson did hear the whistle, he likely believed it was being blown to award him the mark. Common sense, please.
That is exactly what has deserted the law-makers with this latest effort. Michael, caught under the flight of the ball, backed into Richardson. The Tiger forward had nowhere to go and was about to be bowled over. He put out a steadying hand, the impact of which barely moved Michael, let alone removed him from the contest.
If we're talking about the purity of a marking contest, why is it still OK for a player behind to use forearms, hips, or whatever to hold off the man in front, the impact of which is every bit, if not more profound, than a brush with the hand?
But even if the intent was simply to make a push easier to interpret, the hands-in-the-back change has been a miserable failure. Umpires simply can't be in good enough position often enough to detect every one of the most fleeting moments of contact.
Instead, it's become a perilous lucky dip, of which the winning ticket all too often has dramatic consequences of a goal — those missed often costing one, and some, like Saturday night, overshadowing what should have been one of the most talked-about finishes to a game in recent times.
There's often a tendency to dramatise the implications of rule changes, the reality usually proving not nearly as cataclysmic as the dire forecasts. But the hand-wringing that followed the introduction of the hands-in-the-back interpretation has proved spot on. It has been a profound change to the game and, at the very least, should have been trialled first during the pre-season competition. It wasn't and we're paying a high price.
The hands-in-the-back interpretation should go. You suspect, though, pride will prevent an AFL backdown. That stands to hurt the game far more than a few red faces among administrators. Not to mention the shame of all the great football we won't be talking about, lost under the weight of the latest hands-in-the-back controversy.
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