‘Very, very dangerous’: Coaches call out issue AFL ‘has to get on top of’

Carlton coach Michael Voss and Suns coach Damien Hardwick have put the AFL’s umpiring in the spotlight once again.

Hardwick and Voss hit out at the umpiring. Photo: Fox Sports

Carlton coach Michael Voss has reached the end of his tether and will be getting in touch with the umpiring department this week after his team received an unusually low amount of free kicks on Saturday against Gold Coast.

In the shadows of three-quarter time, Carlton had only earned three free kicks for the game, compared to Gold Coast’s 13, before finishing with a flurry to end up with 11 to the Suns’ 16.

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“We’ll follow some up and I don’t say that often,” Voss said after his team’s 29-point win.

“We’ve got some things to follow up because either clearly we’re not getting it right or we’re just educating it wrong.

“So we’ve got a couple of things to follow up just to make sure we have clarity as well that we’re seeing it the same way.

“I don’t sit up here and ever do that because I feel like most of it’s all in our control, and I still firmly believe that, but also it’s our responsibility to get clarity when we’re unsure. And we’re unsure so we’ll get the clarity.

“We’ll do the right channels as well because this isn’t about just focusing on that (bad calls and non-calls that stood out), it’s about taking our time, have a look through the vision, let’s be really clear and we’ve always had really good discussions so I can’t see that changing.

“We’ll just probably seek a little bit more feedback this week than what we normally have.”

Michael Voss was baffled by the lack of frees. Photo: Fox Sports

Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick also voiced his concerns about umpiring, specifically with regards to the implementing of the holding-the-ball rule and the potential detrimental impact that could have on concussion.

“There’s 131 effective tackles today and there were four holding-the-balls for both sides,” Hardwick said.

“That one where Mac Andrew’s had Charlie Curnow at the start, that is a very, very dangerous situation for both players,” he said in reference to an Andrew tackle in the first quarter which saw him holding onto Curnow for an inordinate amount of time without a whistle being blown.

An unprompted Damien Hardwick: "There’s 131 effective tackles today & there were four holding the balls for both sides. That's (incident in vid) a very, very dangerous situation for both players. We’ve just got to get on top of this. The players certainly owe each other a duty of… pic.twitter.com/u3uNVUO2Ko

— David Zita (@DavidZita1) May 25, 2024

“We’ve just got to get on top of this because the players certainly owe each other a duty of care, but as umpires we’ve got to blow the whistle earlier because the reality is they’re putting players in a really compromising position that they could get hurt and we don’t want that.

“We’ve got to look at it, we’ve got to coach it. I know it’s incredibly hard but from a player’s health and wellbeing point of view, we’ve just got to make sure, for the benefit of the game, that we look after the players.

“What it does lead to is a lot of stoppages and all that sort of stuff.”

Hardwick called for the umpires to blow the whistle earlier. Photo: Fox Sports

Voss agreed with Hardwick that 360-degree tackles were a dangerous part of the game that should be stamped out as much as possible, with the help of the umpires blowing their whistles more regularly, but suggested the onus also had to be placed on the player in that situation.

“There’s an element where the player and the umpire can make that environment a bit safer with everything that’s going on in the AFL,” Voss said.

“That’s been raised before. I know it’s absolutely a talking point so I’m not so much too worried about.

“There’s a genuine intent to provide the environment as a really safe environment. I think we’ve done that amazingly well in more recent times.”

Originally published as ‘Very, very dangerous’: Coaches call out issue AFL ‘has to get on top of’