Eddie's radical plan for umpires

[Mr Miyagi]

longer pants...

[BazBoy]

My suggestion is all about Collingwood Ed like most on here —-I fear we could get left behind in modern professional football

[BazBoy]

Perfect for Umps

[David]

[Mr Miyagi]

I want to watch football and not even notice the umpires, they should be inconspicuous unless paying an obvious free kick. That’d be nice. Modern footy feels like I’m watching three teams.

[BazBoy]

Agree Mr M

[eddiesmith]

This idea is actually more stupid than his appointment of Buckley!

[RudeBoy]

It's a ridiculous idea.

The more umpires there are, the more free kicks there will be.

[Ads7]

Going to go against the grain here and say I think some of Eddie's ideas may have merit. Worth noting I am not a fan of Eddie and believe he should have given up presidency some time ago...

Umpiring is never going to be perfect. There have been some howlers lately, so bad that even the AFL has said the umpires have made mistakes (still shocked by this admission). It's worth exploring better ways to umpire the game.

I do agree that at the moment umpires can be blindsided and don't get to view the action from the right angles and calls can be made incorrectly or missed.

Probably hear mention of this by the commentators at least once per game. Umpires have to use their judgement to run to the correct area to visualise the play. This doesn't always pan out due to: (1) umpire judgement error; and/or (2) the play can quickly shift across the ground. If there are umpires in set spots then they can solely focus on analysing the play in one particular zone.

Understand tennis is very different - the sport itself, number of players, dimensions of court etc. but it sort of reminds me of linespeople. Their sole job is to focus on whether or not the ball is out or the player does a foot fault. Although they aren't perfect, I believe they are in a better position to adjudicate such things compared with the main umpire, purely because of the angle/proximity to the play.

As for Eddie's proposed umpire uniforms. I get that it's quite a comical idea to some, and Eddie has prior with suggesting similarly left-field ideas. Is it a terrible idea for the umpires to dress a bit differently so that there is an even clearer distinction in uniform to the players? I don't think so. Probably would get quite cold standing on the boundary line for ~2 hours so if they want to wear pants that's fine by me

Happy to hear anyone's views on this, or suggestions for how to improve the current umpiring situation as a whole, which I believe is well below professional sporting standards.

[David]

I just don’t feel like there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the umpiring to begin with, ambiguously designed rules aside. Human error happens occasionally and still would in any alternative system. Otherwise there just seems to be a ruthless urge to transform the game that Eddie seems to be part of, and I think that should be resisted.

[RudeBoy]

[Ads7]

[RudeBoy]

Let's embrace human error as part of the fabric of the game. Footy is a GAME after all. Abusing the umpires for dodgy calls is part of the fun of the game. It would be terribly boring if the umpires were always right.

I'd dump the goal-line reviews as well.

If we really want to help the umpires, we should simplify the rules, to reduce the opportunity for interpretation. We could start with Bucks' suggestion of getting rid of 'prior opportunity'. If a player gets caught with the ball, then it's a free against them. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.

[eddiesmith]

We want less free kicks, not more. Also would be just another dumb rule that discourages players from actually trying to win the footy

[Dave The Man]