AFL got it wrong in Dane Rampe saga, but umpiring abuse is biggest issue in the game, writes Mick McGuane

The AFL didn’t handle the Dane Rampe situation well. But there is a good reason it came down hard on the Sydney defender for his comments to an umpire, and Mick McGuane has seen it up close.

The AFL got the Dane Rampe saga wrong. Picture: Phil Hillyard

As a lover of football, the AFL’s response to the Dane Rampe saga has completely flummoxed me.

I thought Gillon McLachlan’s justification for why the umpires didn’t pay a free kick to Essendon lacked leadership and strength.

There is nothing wrong with admitting you are wrong. As a game, we learn a lot more from that than trying to convince people everything is right.

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In regards to the $10,000 fine for telling the umpire he talks “like a little girl”, you’d hope the two incidents would be looked at independently of each other but there is a cynicism in most of us that the abuse fine wouldn’t have been as great had Rampe not jumped on to the goalpost and put himself front and centre for the entire week.

It’s a huge fine and I think the severity of it compared to other similar sanctions has shocked a lot of people. The lettuce leaf $1000 fine, fully suspended, the AFL issued for climbing the post is equally perplexing.

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However, there is a strong counter argument to explain why the AFL might have handled both of the Rampe incidents the way it has. And it is one that needs to be taken seriously.

As a local-level footy coach in Melbourne, I am seeing at the coalface the delicate challenge the game faces with how it treats umpires.

For example, in the competition I’m involved in, we have had 150 umpires leave the game just from last year.

It has put an enormous amount of strain on local footy which is the nursery for the next generation of AFL stars.

It was a big Friday night for Dane Rampe. Picture: Phil Hillyard

If we continually berate and offer vitriol that could be seen as negative towards umpiring, particularly when they’re young kids, how is it going to end up?

What I’m seeing is young umpires don’t always handle confrontation well because we live in the land of phones and Facebook and constructive verbal face-to-face conversations don’t really take place; feedback is always hidden behind screens.

Worse still, these kids are hearing the abuse from the boundary line and they’re only two metres from it.

Without umpires, we’ve got no game.

So as disappointing as I’ve found the AFL response this week, I do understand the other side of the coin about how important it is to try to support umpires and eradicate this negativity towards match officials.

Umpires are hard to get and we must value their contribution more than we do. But does that mean explaining away obvious errors in an AFL match is the right way to go about it?

It takes courage to admit to a mistake. What you tend to do once you’ve admitted an error is try to learn from it.

If there was more transparency in the AFL in relation to the admission that it got something wrong, I think we’d all understand and appreciate it.

It’s a difficult game to adjudicate and the wider community needs to sympathise with umpires. We need more respect to be shown all around.