As far as the AFL is concerned, every problem can be solved. Everything can be measured, conquered, spun and sold. Everything can be ameliorated with a snappy press conference, a diversionary thought bubble or a long lunch.
It doesn’t always work like that, of course. The game itself operates in the grey zone. The way it’s funded and administered is built on conflicts of interest, on give and take, on taking a progressive stance one minute and cosying up to the likes of Lachlan Murdoch the next. On any given day, the governing body oscillates between the imperial and the bush league.
I pondered those conflicts of interest, and bush leagues, in the confusion and fury at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday night. In his role as Fox Footy boundary rider, Crows’ Football Director Mark Ricciuto, held a microphone to Swans 100-gamer Nick Blakey, known as the Lizard, as both men tried to process what had just happened: the Lizard had dominated, “Roo” was chalk white, the Crows’ season was almost certainly over, and all hell was breaking loose.
The AFL is an extraordinary organisation. It can negotiate a $4.5bn broadcast rights deal, a deal that every senior business analyst and commentator said was well over the odds. It can convince governments to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars on stadiums, while putting up bugger-all of their own money. It can shilly-shally its way around racism, tanking and supplements investigations.
What continues to elude it - and one would think this was rather important - is its ability to definitively tell us whether a goal is a goal. Everyone accepts that the goal umpire made a mistake on Saturday night. Mistakes happen. Players make mistakes. Umpires make mistakes. Administrators make mistakes. Australian Rules has always been a sport of chaos. Every decision, every quarter, every game, is open to interpretation, and subject to human error.
What’s harder to come to terms with is the score review system itself – the point of it, the confusion it has caused, the lack of proper investment in it, and the complete lack of confidence it elicits. It was brought in to remove howlers. For the most part, it’s been used to confirm the bleeding obvious.
When the bleeding obvious presented itself on Saturday night, the technology was there, begging to be used. But the AFL doesn’t review behinds. It would slow things down, the chief executive, Gil McLachlan, said on Sunday. One would have thought, if ever it could be appropriately applied, even if it was once a year, it would be with 30 seconds to go in what was essentially an elimination final. But no, they only review goals. “The moment was gone,” McLachlan said.
The Adelaide Crows didn’t lose because of one poor goal umpiring decision. They lost because they let Sydney slip out to a 44-point lead. They lost because they kicked eight behinds in the final term. It was the same story last week. It’s been the same story all season. They beat Port Adelaide in two Showdowns, ran Collingwood right to the wire twice and came within a whisker of knocking off Melbourne at the MCG and Brisbane at the Gabba. They’re a young side, well coached, and great to watch. They’ll look back on this season as one that got away.
But they’re entitled to feel a bit dudded. We all are. It would be nice, in the interests of transparency and basic competence, if the AFL could sling a few of its shillings the way of some decent technology. Perhaps even more importantly, it would be nice if it could come up with a better process, a process that’s consistent, a process that, at the very least, makes sense. At the very least, short of adopting Eddie McGuire’s proposal for four goal umpires, the AFL should review behinds.
McLachlan fronted the media in a suburban dog park. His arm was in a sling, the result of falling off his polo horse. His tone was unusually defensive. This was simple human error, he said. The system itself was not at fault. And so the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on. The result stands, the Crows miss the finals, and the poor goal umpire cops the rap. He’ll be waving his flags in the Adelaide Hills for the rest of the year. Like I said – bush league.
