Umpires in yellow...

[Triple B]

...WTF.

You seriously have to wonder about the people who make those type of decisions.

Yellow tops and black shorts and numbers on their backs.

Today was about as bad as a clash I've seen. Crazy!!!

[desredandwhite]

Agree - ludicrous decision.

How hard is it? You have a choice of:

White
Red
Orange
Yellow

The teams' colours are:

White
Red
Yellow
Brown

How hard is it to look at those two lists and realise that ORANGE is the only colour that is suitable?

Bring back the baby blue!

[Bear]

i seriously could not find the umps for several seconds when I arrived during the 1st q today. couln't believe they were so similar to the Hawks!

orange? i find that orange is too close to red... what is wrong with... err... all white?

[Bron]

Absolutely Nuts.

I reckon the Hawks could validly complain that they thought they were kicking/passing to their players, but it turned out to be an ump. And similarly, there was clear space we could have kicked to, but there was an ump and we could have misread them as a Hawk.

Very very silly.

And white works .... it's much easier to call them maggots that way!

[Go Swannies]

There were umpires out there today? With some of the decisions I thought their outfits were just declaring their allegiance.

[Bear]

i read an ump's rep defending the decision by saying white would clash with the Swans!!!

maybe they thought we would be wearing our away uniform of the 70s with predominantly white jumper and shorts ala St George Dragons!?!

[Thunder Shaker]

Originally posted by desredandwhite
You have a choice of:

White
Red
Orange
Yellow

Perhaps we need to add Royal Blue to the list, so the AFL has more choice for Hawthorn games.

[Troy G]

SYDNEY, May 24 AAP - Sydney coach Paul Roos today slammed the AFL's decision for the umpires to wear yellow shirts in yesterday's game against Hawthorn.

He said he didn't notice a colour clash with the Hawks' brown and gold strip all that much during the match, but it stood out more when he was reviewing the video-tape today.

"It was staggering. A lot of the times we had to stop the tape and say `that's not a Hawthorn player'," said Roos.

"We couldn't work out why our Swans guys weren't kicking it to certain players and then we would stop the tape and actually realise it wasn't a Hawthorn player, it was an umpire.

"It was absolutely glaring studying the game today on television, so I don't know who made the decision for them to wear it but it was one of the more mind-boggling decisions of all time."

An AFL spokesman said the Swans had previously requested that umpires not wear red or orange shirts in their games to avoid a colour clash.

That left a choice of yellow or white.

The AFL decided on the yellow because it was a lighter shade than the gold in the Hawks' jumper.

[JF_Bay22_SCG]

I recall that there was a Teal Cup game last year where Sam Newman went off his nut about there being umpires in yellow when WA played SA. I laughed it off, as they actually remedied their error.

Ok, if they made an error, I can accept it. What I cannot accept is the fact that that they did not change shirts and shorts after a quarter or two.

Not only was it confusing being there, I could have imaginided it was far worse on TV.

JF

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by Thunder Shaker
Perhaps we need to add Royal Blue to the list, so the AFL has more choice for Hawthorn games.

Bright blue (like the Carlton M&M jumper) was the other option I was thinking of.

[AussieAnge]

There was a point during the game where it looked like a hawk was kicking the ball to the ump, so it may have confused them too.
Bring back the butcher's coats and pork pie hats for the goal umpires an hubby would like "that nice Katrina Presley" back too!

[Go Swannies]

Over where I sat the ball had to come back a long way for a throw in. A Hawk kicked it to the ump who jumped and took a perfect mark. I had to look again to check as I first thought it was teammate to teammate.

[Alec]

I thought wearing orange to a Swans game was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen. I now stand corrected.

According to "On the Couch" the decision to wear yellow came right from the top - ie Andrew Demetriou himself. I don't know what is more ridiculous...Umpires wearing yellow to a Hawks game, or the idea of the AFL CEO sitting around with colour charts making wardrobe choices.

The way AFL came out and defended the decision only makes it all the more foolish. The way their statement sounded, you'd think that yellow would be the colour of choice for Swans vs Hawks from now on!

Here's my vote: fluorescent LIME. No mistaking them for anything other than umpires in that colour!

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by Alec
The way AFL came out and defended the decision only makes it all the more foolish. The way their statement sounded, you'd think that yellow would be the colour of choice for Swans vs Hawks from now on!

What did they say? I didn't see anything.

[ugg]

I liked what Mike Sheahan had to say on this issue: White shirts, white shorts, white socks, after all its worked well for the best part of 100 years!