A fitting article after last weekend on the rules and umpiring.....Rules destroys marking spectacle
Richard Hinds | April 3, 2008 | The Age
IT IS Australian football's signature moment. One that distinguishes it from rival codes.
The ball flies high and two players, suddenly isolated on a vast arena, are engaged in a contest that tests size, power, athleticism and willpower.
Sometimes the forward will ascend with balletic grace and take the mark. Sometimes the defender will arrive with split-second timing and knock the ball from his grasp.
The result was once proclaimed by the roar of the crowd. Now, too often, there is only that anticlimactic groan that follows an umpire's intervention and a perplexing postscript during which confused players wait to find out who infringed and why.
The problem is frustratingly obvious. In trying to make marking contests "fairer", the game's lawmakers have instead neutered them.
Believing that outlawing marginal and incidental contact would encourage more high-marking, they have compelled umpires to pay free kicks for infringements that have no or little influence on the outcome of a one-on- one battle and devalued — at least in a sporting sense — the goals that result.
Umpires would once monitor marking contests with one general thought — ensuring every player had a reasonable chance to mark or spoil. Now their minds spin like roulette wheels before the marble lands in one of the myriad rules and interpretations.
Did he hold? Did he chop the arms? Was there high contact? Did he have hands in the back? Did he push? Did he make contact more than five metres from the ball? Was there any shepherding? Did he — courtesy of St Kilda's attempt to win favours for Nick Riewoldt — "tunnel"?
With so many options to choose from, and two big bodies colliding, it is often not a matter of whether a free kick will be paid but which one.
Sometimes it seems umpires blow the whistle reflexively at the sight of physical contact and justify the decision later. That is not hard to do.
The frustration of players and coaches is obvious — particularly those who believe the failed rules are a consequence of isolating the clubs from the lawmaking process. But if the AFL chooses to ignore those with the most intimate knowledge of the game, then it should at least cock an ear to the crowd. Listen to the fans who would once watch marking contests with a sense of excitement and now do so now with barely disguised dread that the slightest contact by a defender will result in a potentially crucial free kick.
It is a serious blight on an otherwise vibrant game. One which, despite dated knee-jerk attacks on flooding and so-called "ugly football", has found a good balance.
A game in which coaches are using constant bench rotations to ensure players can maintain high levels of pace and skill for longer than ever.
The speed and precision with which the ball is now propelled between the 50-metre arcs can provide the most stimulating foreplay. But too often it ends with the anticlimax of the umpire's whistle.
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/marking-spectacle-destroyed/2008/04/02/1206851012513.html
