“At times, we do over-complicate AFL,” the GWS footballer Stephen Coniglio once said.
And that was before he gave away a free kick for a particularly Italian protest to an umpire, becoming the central figure in another round of officiating controversy, and the subject of – even by AFL House standards – a particularly odd media statement.
On Saturday night, Coniglio’s side narrowly lost to Carlton after an umpire paid a free kick against him for dissent late in the fourth quarter.
When a teammate tackled a Carlton player who appeared to then incorrectly dispose of the ball, Coniglio exclaimed, with his arms outstretched in a manner befitting his heritage, “how is that not a free kick” to umpire Craig Fleer.
The fact that an umpire gave a free kick for dissent against a player with Italian heritage for expressing with their hands is borderline cultural vilification.#afl #IstandwithConiglio pic.twitter.com/kxBZYDRxIK
— Alex Williams (@alexwilliams282) April 4, 2023
Turns out it was a free kick, just not the one Coniglio thought it was. Fleer paid a free kick to Carlton from the top of the goal square for Coniglio’s dissent, and Jesse Motlop kicked truly.
The AFL outrage machine is permanently on standby at level nine. It was immediately cranked to 11. It is unusual for anyone to care much about what GWS are doing, but on this occasion the umpires may have helped Carlton win, which was indeed grave.
Umpires are deserving of protection, even if they get called white maggots by the crowd, as they have been for generations (despite the fact they no longer wear white, and that maggots can only be white, making it unkind, inaccurate and a tautology). But this was a whistle too far.
A great fear always emerges almost immediately after an umpiring controversy.
And the gluttony of former AFL players moistening chairs in commentary boxes do a sterling job of sounding genuinely concerned every single time they utter it.
That fear, of course, is “what if this happened in a grand final?”
The AFL did little to allay that fear. It did, however, make you question lots of other things.
“We understand the debate on the level of dissent,” the AFL’s head of umpiring, Dan Richardson, said on Monday.
“We understand the debate on whether the umpire made the right call on the weekend, but this part is clear – if you put yourself in a position for an umpire to have to make a call by verbally or visually challenging a decision, then you need to live with the potential consequence, and in the example on the weekend – the umpire made a call.
“If you don’t challenge the decisions, then there is no need for the debate. The approach going forward won’t change.”
What Richardson appeared to be saying, in a way only someone at AFL House can, is that bad things only happen to you if you deserve it.
The dial on the outrage machine appeared set to snap off, whirling 70 metres through space like a Jack Lukosius set shot, before Richardson offered up something else: umpires were human too.
“Just like we have some players or coaches who occasionally get emotional, or become overly expressive when under pressure, we also have umpires with differing levels of temperament,” Richardson said.
(On a second reading, he actually makes umpires sound more like dogs than humans, but let’s stick with it).
“We have a set of guidelines for the umpires to work between, and we coach them, but we also can’t coach human response,” he added, cleverly working in a non-canine reference.
“Footy is not black and white, it is one of the hardest games to umpire, there is a level of ‘grey’ and within this area is where the debate always sits.
“The umpires understand in the heat of battle there are going to be times regarding this rule, whether it has been an accumulation across the match or a single response, a time comes where they need to make a call.”
So the AFL was nowhere, basically, meaning we need to look elsewhere for solutions. Perhaps the best approach is to have opposition players defend umpires against on-field dissent.
In one of my last games for the Port Fairy Under-18s, when the ball bounced off a teammate’s knee and out of bounds, an opponent from Cobden loudly questioned the umpire about why it was not out on the full.
“The knee’s not part of your leg,” my teammate shouted at him. “You dickhead.”
