Hardwick also weighed in on the controversial Stephen Coniglio dissent free kick, describing the balance between respect for umpires and the emotion of the game as “challenging” while claiming the AFL ruling suggests emotion is equivalent to dissent.
“It is really challenging; we understand the respect for the umpire, no question. As an industry, we’ve got to set the standard and we completely understand that.
“What is challenging is that our game is an emotional game,” Hardwick said.
“We don’t want to take that out of it, but we’ve also got to make sure we remain respectful to the umpires.
“Sometimes we want our players to be emotional, but does that mean dissent? They’ve made it pretty clear at this current stage that it probably is.”
Asked if he told his players to keep their arms down, he quipped: “Once again, it is a challenging thing, we’ve got a lot of Italians in our group.”
Source: HeraldSun.
