4th Umpire

[dawson]

The pace of the game means that something has to be done about umpiring - they are missing too much.

What about the umpires being miked up to a fourth umpire who is watching the game from the stands and can talk in the umpires ear if an obvious error was made.

[Dpw]

Would probably slow the game down to much, but maybe returning to the old style of two umpires may atleast provide more consistancy. which perhaps is the lesser of two evils.
I feel having three umpires has actually done the opposite to what it was meant to achieve. Facts are we all make mistakes but if you are going to make mistakes atleast try and make it wrong for everybody.

[Reggi]

Another idiot to make more stupid decisions. It's not a visibility thing, it is poor judgement.

Roy Masters is the person who has always summed up the problem with AFL umpiring, when he said "Why in the AFL does the front running team get all the frees"

It's becuase the umpires instruction is that "the infringement must have decided the contest", not "the infringement constitues a free kick", which is why a small jumper tug on Hird is a free and you can decapitate Paul Bevan without having a free paid against you. When a team is in front, umpires tend to assume that they will winning everything, and the opposition side is impeding them.

This is the cause of endless frustration to supporters who see it as endless inconsistency.

You get one Nimrod like Meredith yesterday and a professional sports event becomes a farce.

He never let Sydney get into the game

[Benevolent Ert]

fair go - we had 3 extra men out there against us yesterday - why would we want 4???