David Penberthy: AFL should be about sport. Not social engineering

Recent alarm at the non-new fact that umpires cop stick at games is yet another example of the AFL shifting beyond its brief and into the world of preachiness and social engineering, writes David Penberthy.

Adam Goodes on field for St Kilda versus Sydney game. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

The AFL might know a fair bit about sport, marketing, media and merchandising, but it knows little about the Australian psyche.

One of the great truisms about Australians and their endearing disregard for authority is that the best way to ensure Australians do something is to tell them not to do it.

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Adam Goodes by my reckoning is one of the greatest athletes ever to play our national game and a cracking bloke to boot. I have no doubt that much of the booing he copped towards the end of his marvellous but maligned career was the product of racism, pure and simple.

Many white Australians found Goodes confronting because he had the temerity to call out racism for what it was.

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Equally, I have no doubt either that the booing he faced was exacerbated by the fact that the AFL took it upon itself to issue an edict to the Australian people that booing was unacceptable and the everyone should cease and desist.

Adam Goodes in action during his illustrious playing career. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

To that end, much of the booing that accompanied Goodes on to the ground and whenever he got a touch was not so much directed but projected rage over the perceived sense that politically correct busy-bodies were deigning to tell us how we should act.

Ditto the decision by AFL House to light itself up in the colours of the rainbow ahead of the marriage equality vote.

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Even as an enthusiastic “Yes” voter, this showy, how-virtuous-are-we preachiness made me gag, as yet another example of posturing from an organisation that should really busy itself more on things like the incorrect disposal of the ball, congestion around stoppages, the affordability of the match-day experience for average fans.

The latest outrage to catch the attention of the AFL is the fact that, week in week out, umpires are copping a fair bit of stick at games — not just from thousands of spectators but even some of the players too.

The AFL’s alarm at this completely non-new fact is informed by a modern sense of cringe-worthy managerialism, where the players and umps are “the employees”, the AFL “the employer”, the playing field “the workplace”.

Sydney's Dane Rampe was fined $10,000 for telling the umpire he “talks like a little girl” after a free kick was paid against him for holding the ball. Picture. Phil Hillyard

There have been three examples of this abuse in the past couple of weeks.

Sydney co-captain Dane Rampe was fined $10,000 after he told a field umpire that he sounded “like a little girl”. I’m not sure if Rampe committed the double sin of being both sexist and umpir-ist here, but he was whacked accordingly.

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Carlton veteran Dale Thomas was fined $7500 for labelling a boundary umpire a “cheat”, even though he was deeply remorseful and apologised, while offering the wholly valid rationalisation that it was something stupid he said in the heat of the moment, and didn’t mean.

The most interesting case involves not the players but a group of fans — some of the most long-suffering fans in world sport right now — those poor bastards in the hapless Carlton Football Club Cheer Squad, who like condemned men and women schlep their way to the MCG every other week to watch their team get demolished.

The AFL says the severity of Carlton Blues player Dale Thomas’ fine for umpire abuse sends a very clear message. Picture: Erik Anderson/AAP

It all became too much for these Blue fans a couple of weeks back, when in a compelling display of the Australian inability to write clever sports chants, they devised a song called “The umpire’s a wanker”.

That song has now caught the eye of AFL House, with a letter sent off to the cheer squad asking it to explain its conduct, apologise and ensure the song is never sung again.

Yet again we have an example of the AFL shifting beyond its brief and into the world of preachiness and social engineering.

Of course there should be real efforts made to make sure umpires feel safe at games and are not subjected to endless mindless abuse. Nothing drives me crazier at the footy than getting stuck next to some boorish lunatic who spends the entire game screaming in disbelief at every decision or non-decision that is made.

Having spent four years coaching my son’s primary school footy team, and having seen some of the boys arc up at the umps from time to time — the umps in this case being young high school students earning 20 bucks a game — I am also mindful of the fact behaviour at the elite level influences behaviour at the grassroots.

But at the same time, it is pretty typical of the AFL not to opt for the value of an education campaign but to throw the switch to ham-fisted censoriousness, throwing around fines like confetti and issuing edicts to fans about what they can and cannot say.

My sense from spending four decades going to football matches is that behaviour towards umpires is probably better in 2019 than it has ever been, in the same way that racist abuse and foul language has become so much more isolated than it was in the 1970s.

Equally, my sense on the umpire question now is that fan behaviour towards the umps is likely to worsen as a result of the AFL going fine-crazy and giving everyone a stern talking-to about the way we should behave.

On that score the AFL has got the runs on the board, as demonstrated by its fruitless stance against the booing of Goodesy.

For all their hooey about players as employees and the playing field as workplace, the reality remains that sport is unlike any other human endeavour in that it is innately gladiatorial and passion-driven.

Players aren’t robots and umpires aren’t accountants. When you go to do your tax, you don’t sit in an arena with your accountant with half the crowd barracking for him as he tries to find deductions, the other 40,000 spectators cheering for the ATO.

If you take the passion and the madness out of sport there will be nothing left, and it will really feel like just another bland day at work.

@Penbo