Wight should have had kick
Mark Stevens | April 22, 2008 12:00am
CAMERON Wight, a defender with only one career set-shot goal to his name, should have taken the last-gasp kick that broke Richmond's heart. The Bulldog was the player nearest to Brian Lake when he soared to take a pack mark with just 37 seconds left in Sunday's thriller.
Wight was shoulder-to-shoulder with Lake as he jumped, with Dogs forward Scott Welsh further away in front of the pack.
Umpire Simon Meredith eventually pointed to Will Minson, the third-closest player to Lake, to take the shot from 45m after Lake stumbled away and headed for the bench.
Minson goaled to level the scores, sealing a draw, and questions were immediately raised about the validity of Harris's injury.
AFL umpires director Jeff Gieschen yesterday conceded Minson was the wrong man to take the kick.
Asked if the right player ended up with the ball, Gieschen said: "Technically not.
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"When you look at that incident, you see a number of players flying for the ball in the pack," Gieschen said.
"Will Minson was in the front of that pack, very close to it."
In Meredith's defence, it was an extremely difficult call amid the chaos.
"The umpires don't get a chance to stop the game, go back and have a look at replays and see who is exactly there," Gieschen said.
Wight, being groomed as a tall defensive option, has kicked only 5.3 in his 31-game career.
From set-shots, he has only 1.2, and given his lack of experience with clutch goalkicking, he has rarely looked comfortable in the role.
Lindsay Gilbee, the best field kick in the Bulldogs side, headed to the scene in the hope of being given the kick, only for the umpires to decide that Minson had been closest.
Richmond forward Nathan Brown had his own take on the issue.
"I think the umpire may have thought that Lindsay wasn't there in the first place and he looked around and thought Will's probably not the greatest kick," Brown said.
"But unbeknown to the umpire, Will Minson's goalkicking is phenomenal."
The "Where's Willy?" question was one of many issues up for review at the AFL umpiring department yesterday.
Goal umpire Mark Harrison won the support of Gieschen for a decision in the second term of the Bulldogs-Richmond clash.
Tiger Matthew Richardson admitted he thought the ball was over the line when he marked a shot by Daniel Giansiracusa, but Gieschen said the video evidence was not as damning. "It's not as cut and dried," he said.
"There's one particular angle that I think people should probably have a look at.
"The whole of the ball has to cross the whole of the line, which includes the back of the padding."
Gieschen said no angle could conclusively reveal the ump got it wrong.
Damien Sully, the umpire at the centre of the bad-bounce controversy on Saturday night, is facing the axe this week.
Gieschen did not confirm Sully's omission yesterday, saying a decision would be made in the next 24 hours and he would discuss it with the umpire.
But Sully's fate is believed to have been sealed and he will be missing from the AFL panel this week.
"We're really disappointed in that bounce. Everybody's seen it and everybody realises that it was a bad bounce," Gieschen said.
"No one's more disappointed than the umpire himself."
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