Graham Cornes: Dump the 50m penalty rule. It’s changing the outcome of matches

Umpires have weaponised the 50m penalty, writes Graham Cornes, and are using against players for just looking at them wrong way.

At the start of this football season, the AFL announced that four field umpires would now officiate at its games.

It seemed a summary decision implemented with indecent haste. How could four umpires make the game any better than three? Would there not be confusion of interpretation?

What pressure would this now put on suburban and local leagues to follow suit given it’s hard enough to recruit umpires at the amateur and country leagues anyway? Why would it be necessary when, compared with other eras of football, the ball is often locked in the same area of the ground for extended periods of time?

The Sherrin does not move up and down the ground anywhere as quickly as it did in the days when defence did not dominate attack and teams regularly scored more than 20 goals a game. They were the days.

What is particularly perplexing is that the four-umpire system was implemented with almost indecent haste. A couple of pre-season games and that was it.

It has not worked. The game is no better for it. Inconsistency in interpretation, particularly in meting out 50-metre penalties is infuriating the fans.

Nathan Williamson pays a 50m penalty against Christian Petracca of the Demons. Pic: Michael Klein

There has always been one simple way of assessing how well a game has been umpired. If you didn’t notice them, the umpires had done a pretty good job. That is rarely the case these days. Even allowing for team biases, the standard of officiating and levels of dissatisfaction have never been as low.

There are two major problems. One, the interpretation of holding the ball, is age-old. The other unfortunately, which has impacted dramatically on recent games, is the indecent haste with which aforementioned 50m penalties are handed out.

There have been three glaring, game-changing examples of this in the past fortnight. In the final quarter of the Gold Coast/Bulldogs game in round 11, Bulldogs player, Bailey Williams marked the ball on the wing.

His opponent, Ben Ainsworth rushed in to stand the mark. The umpire immediately blew the whistle and imposed the 50-metre penalty, saying he was over the mark by “two metres”.

There was no attempt to set the mark or tell him to move back two metres, just the blunt “50 metres”. Williams duly scored the goal but the replay showed clearly that Ainsworth was not over the mark at all.

Boundary rider Shaun Burgoyne acknowledged as much when he eventually saw the replay. But there was no condemnation of the umpire. Fortunately, the Suns still won in a very close game.

In last week’s Crows/Gold Coast game in Darwin, the Suns player Bailey Humphrey marked the ball 60m from goal. Chayce Jones arrived to stand the mark, and again the umpire immediately awarded a 50m penalty to Humphrey, which of course took him to the top of the goalsquare for an easy goal.

Unhappy Collingwood fans react during a match against Carlton. Picture: AAP / Julian Smith

Again, the replay showed clearly Jones did not encroach over the mark. Anyway, why could the umpire not tell him to move back a step or two, as they have always done since umpires were introduced to the game?

Then in Thursday night’s vital Swans/St Kilda match, in a tense last quarter, St Kilda forward, Mitch Owens marked just outside 50. Swans player, Errol Gulden stood where he landed, which was just over the mark. The umpire this time did call “back two metres”, but before Gulden could move, immediately imposed the 50m penalty.

The inexplicable decision, which ensured a St Kilda goal, infuriated the Sydney crowd as it all but put the game beyond Sydney’s reach.

The 50m penalty might have been introduced to the game for good reasons but none of today’s petty infringements deserve to be punished with such a severe penalty. However, some umpires have weaponised it. They use it as a threat directed at the players who might look sideways at them, raise their arms in frustration at a decision, or simply to remind them who really is in charge and who the crowds have come to see.

Regardless of what is said, there are some umpires who give the impression that they believe the fans come to see them and the fans at home want to hear them.

It is time the AFL took the 50m option away from the umpires. There are many who may not remember why it was introduced in the first place. Kevin Sheedy and the Essendon team always get the blame (or the credit) for it.

Whenever a mark was taken, the object was to interfere and delay the time the opponent had to move the ball on. This often meant scragging or throwing the opponent to the ground. A 15m penalty allowed your team to get players in defensive positions behind the ball without conceding any serious territory.

Very rarely did it have match-changing outcomes, although there is one famous incident when a 15m penalty impacted on the heartbreaking outcome of a preliminary final. In the 1987 preliminary final between Melbourne and Hawthorn, Gary Buckenara marked on the final siren, 55m from goal. In his haste to get back in defence, Melbourne ruckman, the famous Irishman, Jim Stynes, who was still new to the game, ran between Buckenara and the man on the mark.

The umpire had no alternative but to impose the 15m penalty. Buckenara still had to kick the goal, but it was much easier from 40m out than an unlikely 55m.

We could talk about the 1989 SANFL elimination final between Glenelg and Norwood, but it’s still raw and the anger still simmers.

The AFL has the perfect case study for reducing the 50m penalty to 25m here in South Australia. The SANFL has been using it for years. The 50m penalty is retained for the most serious of transgressions but it is rarely used.

This more commonsense approach appeases the fans (if they ever can be appeased). It’s decidedly different because in the AFL rarely is a 50m penalty imposed without a furious reaction from the crowd. Surely someone is listening at AFL House.

No one is suggesting that it’s easy umpiring at AFL level and it is true that umpires who have officiated at AFL level and drop back to local levels say the difference is profound and the exhaustion level significant.

How then did they manage in historic days when there was only one or two umpires? Surely, it’s a matter of physical and mental conditioning. Three should be plenty. They certainly are rewarded well enough.

However it’s not complicated and if the AFL was listening to the escalating levels of dissatisfaction from the terraces it would do three things.

One, get rid of the 50m penalty for all but serious interference after a mark; two, sort out the holding the ball and the ridiculous “prior opportunity” interpretation; and three, change this ridiculous “insufficient intent” to keep the ball in play, to last touch out of play as we have here.

Or is that too South Australian for them?