With umpires, sometimes less is more

It’s the last week of September in the year 2109, and Melbourne is abuzz with Grand Final fever. Thanks to rising sea levels, the MCG and Docklands are long gone, and instead this year’s match is being played at the newly-built seaside home of the AFL, McGuire Park in Broadmeadows (cryogenics have come a long way, and a freshly-thawed Eddie is now in charge of the league).

This year’s match between Western Sydney and Outer Western Sydney promises to be a cracker, but unfortunately the lead-up has been overshadowed by more controversy over umpiring, with North Queensland coach Michael Voss IV directing strong criticism at officials after his onballers received some extremely close tagging during their narrow Preliminary Final loss.

Umpires’ boss Eugene Fevola, who is still red-faced over the failed trial of robotic goal umpires, today acknowledged that some infringements were missed during the game and that it may be time to consider the introduction of a 13th field umpire.

Okay, so perhaps the AFL will never have 13 field umpires, but it will be well on the way if the mooted introduction of a fourth field umpire goes ahead. Obviously, it is the playmakers like Judd, Ablett and Kerr that make AFL so exciting, and hence they should receive adequate protection from taggers that bend the rules. However, a quick look at the statistics from 2008 reveals that in fact these three players all ranked in the top 10 for Frees For, with all of them regularly receiving four or more frees per game. Of course, this is not to say that frees aren’t still being missed, but clearly these players aren’t being impeded from plying their trade effectively since they are almost always at the business end of Brownlow Medal tally board.

But even if the league’s premier midfielders are getting a rough deal, why is the addition of an extra umpire seen as the solution? It seems like whenever a chorus of complaining about umpiring standards erupts, the league makes the knee-jerk response of adding another umpire. This generally calms things down for a few years until the whole cycle starts again.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t seek improvement in umpiring standards, but what most football fans desire from officials is consistency, and the addition of extra umpires will deliver the exact opposite, as another umpire just means another interpretation of the rules. As it stands, there are three field umpires, one of which is always parked in one fifty metre arc doing nothing at all. Surely better use could be made of the third umpire, or the existing boundary umpires, before the league goes and expands the panel.

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