Rnd 22 Swans v Kangaroos Aug 20 Hobart

[barry]

I hope the detailed umpire stats are kept, but kept in house. No good can come off publicising them.

Plus you can always keep your own stats if you're keen enough.

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[Ludwig]

Yes Nico, perceptions can be deceiving. But the raw stats seem to be telling a story. If there was a detailed breakdown of frees, like who paid them and what they were for, there would be a much more accountable umpiring panel.

The umpires do have a weekly review of all the games and all the decisions, so the umpires are in fact accountable. It would have to be a conspiracy led by Hayden Kennedy to favour particular clubs to think that there was intent to favour some clubs over others. Someone must have the stats for frees given by umpire other than the AFL umpiring department, but I think making them public would undermine the integrity of the game as they certainly would give a perception of favouritism by some umpires which may not be at all valid.

As said by others, the fan base from every club thinks the umps have it in for them, except Hawthorn perhaps. I thought North got the better of the free calls this week, but last week we certainly had the umpiring go in our favour. It's not the pure free count that necessarily determines who gets the better of the calls on the day.

[ugg]

Earlier this year when there was that furore about Troy Pannell favouring the Bulldogs in a particular game, it was revealed he had awarded 17 free kicks to the Dogs in one particular game. The source of this information was a surreptitiously taken blurry photo of a Champion Data computer program showing these stats. So yes CD do keep these stats but they are certainly not for public consumption.

[Nico]

Yes Nico, perceptions can be deceiving. But the raw stats seem to be telling a story. If there was a detailed breakdown of frees, like who paid them and what they were for, there would be a much more accountable umpiring panel.

I am home with a bug at the moment so if the replay is on tomorrow I will see if I can pick how many frees Umpire Schmitt gave North. Sometimes one particular umpire seems to give most of the decisions. Maybe the other umpires just didn't pay frees to us.Interestingly, today Carlton had 20 frees to Melbourne 5. I am guessing the Dees supporters will be fuming.

[O'Reilly Boy]

The television coverage really annoys me. It seems to me that they haven't got past the idea that the only narrative is the man on man contest. The whole shape of yesterday's game was determined by the Roos playing 8 behind the ball?I think that Stewie Dew mentioned this in the brief half time interview. A good tactic: North crowded our attacking 50, while threatening to open up their attacking zone, isolating Aliir and backing Brown and company to take contested marks. Watching the coverage we don't see this. The only reference to the shape of the game came late in the fourth quarter when one of the commentators referred to the game going man on man, a comment that only makes sense if we have been shown that the game had been played by North with one and often two spares in the back half.
That was the story of the game; on TV we get nothing of this. I would have thought that rather simply stacking up five or six commentators all saying the same thing, there would be scope for some wide shot analysis, including alternative camera angles (they did shift, on a couple of occasions yesterday, to an end-on view, but there was no accompanying analysis). The laziness of the TV broadcast is astounding.

[Doctor]

The television coverage really annoys me. It seems to me that they haven't got past the idea that the only narrative is the man on man contest. The whole shape of yesterday's game was determined by the Roos playing 8 behind the ball?I think that Stewie Dew mentioned this in the brief half time interview. A good tactic: North crowded our attacking 50, while threatening to open up their attacking zone, isolating Aliir and backing Brown and company to take contested marks. Watching the coverage we don't see this. The only reference to the shape of the game came late in the fourth quarter when one of the commentators referred to the game going man on man, a comment that only makes sense if we have been shown that the game had been played by North with one and often two spares in the back half.
That was the story of the game; on TV we get nothing of this. I would have thought that rather simply stacking up five or six commentators all saying the same thing, there would be scope for some wide shot analysis, including alternative camera angles (they did shift, on a couple of occasions yesterday, to an end-on view, but there was no accompanying analysis). The laziness of the TV broadcast is astounding.

I completely agree. I can partly excuse Jason Bennett as he is the play by play guy but the analysts are there to tell us what we can't see and also tell us why. The vast majority of AFL "experts" do no such thing, which is why Kane Cornes was so brilliant on AFL360, as he was merely doing what all the others should be but was doing it so well that he showed the rest of them up.

On the umpiring, Schmitt does seem to consistently go against us and also seems to give decisions to the other team that he won't give to us. The deliberate against Naismith was correct, but the one against Towers (I think) was ridiculous. There were a few others too (Smith as opposed to Petrie for example) that show this up. I'm not normally one for this kind of thing, and I accept that umps like Nicholls and Chamberlain are generally fair, but Schmitt seems to treat us like Stevie does when we play Hawthorn.

[Dosser]

The umpiring is generally ok if we win, but if we lose then the umpires obviously have a mandate from the AFL and twirl their moustaches while giving free kicks against us. Fair dinkum guys, let's get our tinfoil hats on.

[Industrial Fan]

Scottee and others; watching the game I didn't notice the discrepancy in free kick count, but I think it is a long bow to think Umpire Schmitt is anti Swans. If you listen to SEN and supporters of other clubs, there is a conspiracy against almost every club. Maybe the umpiring is not up to standard but to think all umpires play favourites is a bit much for me to digest.

i think Roos is right in saying the rules are too hard to umpire - there are rules and guidelines and even with the benefit of replays and a full review some decisions on whistleblowers they can't say convincingly one way or another if some decisions are correct

[Scottee]

The umpiring is generally ok if we win, but if we lose then the umpires obviously have a mandate from the AFL and twirl their moustaches while giving free kicks against us. Fair dinkum guys, let's get our tinfoil hats on.

But we won Dosser, and we are still smelling a rat.

[Scottee]

The television coverage really annoys me. It seems to me that they haven't got past the idea that the only narrative is the man on man contest. The whole shape of yesterday's game was determined by the Roos playing 8 behind the ball?I think that Stewie Dew mentioned this in the brief half time interview. A good tactic: North crowded our attacking 50, while threatening to open up their attacking zone, isolating Aliir and backing Brown and company to take contested marks. Watching the coverage we don't see this. The only reference to the shape of the game came late in the fourth quarter when one of the commentators referred to the game going man on man, a comment that only makes sense if we have been shown that the game had been played by North with one and often two spares in the back half.
That was the story of the game; on TV we get nothing of this. I would have thought that rather simply stacking up five or six commentators all saying the same thing, there would be scope for some wide shot analysis, including alternative camera angles (they did shift, on a couple of occasions yesterday, to an end-on view, but there was no accompanying analysis). The laziness of the TV broadcast is astounding.

Totally agree O'Reilly . The coverage is generally superficial, perfunctory and poor in explaining the bigger picture. I also thought that the North game was done on the El cheapo with very few cameras and little on the ground presence.

[Scottee]

Earlier this year when there was that furore about Troy Pannell favouring the Bulldogs in a particular game, it was revealed he had awarded 17 free kicks to the Dogs in one particular game. The source of this information was a surreptitiously taken blurry photo of a Champion Data computer program showing these stats. So yes CD do keep these stats but they are certainly not for public consumption.

The point has been made that the data should not be made available for public consumption, presumably because it could put the umpires under too much pressure. However, that makes me wonder about who it is that reviews the umpiring decisions and what the process of review is. Can anybody enlighten me?

[AnnieH]

I haven't watched the whole game (damn you cleaning the house), but whatever happened to "we need to be ruthless"?

[ugg]

The point has been made that the data should not be made available for public consumption, presumably because it could put the umpires under too much pressure. However, that makes me wonder about who it is that reviews the umpiring decisions and what the process of review is. Can anybody enlighten me?

There's a head of umpiring used to be Wayne Campbell before he left for a job with GWS. Temporarily Luke Ball is holding this position. There's also an umpires' coach currently held by former umpire Hayden Kennedy

As for the process they've never revealed it

[Ludwig]

I haven't watched the whole game (damn you cleaning the house), but whatever happened to "we need to be ruthless"?

Cleaning the house during the footy season? What a novel idea. There's plenty of time in October.

I'm can wait. Not too bad so far.

[Primmy]

Looks familiar