What Blight believes to be the cause of frustration with umpiring
07/02/2024 07:20 PM
V/AFL great Malcolm Blight is feeling the frustration that has bubbled to the surface surrounding the umpiring and officiating of matches in 2024.
Blight admits he was surprised by what league CEO Andrew Dillon said this week in regards to umpiring being "as good as it's ever been".
"I must say, I would've thought that would've been a statement from Laura Kane who is in charge of football at the AFL," he said on SEN's Sportsday SA.
"But the CEO saw fit to do that, which was interesting."
The former Adelaide and Geelong coach believes the majority of game plans concocted by the majority of coaches has greatly contributed to the ever-increasing exasperation.
"The defensive nature of putting all the players behind the ball, it started many, many years ago, bit by bit," Blight continued.
"I just think that coaches have brought this on themselves. Not all today's coaches, some of today's coaches.
"So they've actually brought this on themselves to make it a bit trickier (to umpire)."
Blight also questioned four field umpires, suggesting that he felt the recent configuration of three was sufficient to properly adjudicate the game.
"The other thing is, four umpires is always interesting to me," Blight said further.
"We grew up with one and then two, and when it went to three, I thought, 'that makes sense in the professional world'. One this end, one around the ball and one somewhere else.
"I thought that sounded about right to me and it looked right.
"They're not as good as they've ever been because they've got to make more decisions now because there's more congestion.
"They've got to make more decisions, so they're going to get a lot more right, but they're also going to get a lot more wrong."
Asked if the AFL should go back to three umpires, Blight said: "True."
"It makes sense to me, it's logical, sequential, in order, a fourth one puts another determination on it.
"They're having a bit of a rough trot at the moment and we don't want to see that."
One more umpiring-related aspect that irritates Blight is the centre bounce.
He feels it's time to ditch it so the umpires who can make the right decisions are promoted over those who can bounce the ball.
"If they stop bouncing the ball in the centre of the ground and throw it up, we might get a better quality of umpire that make decisions but can't bounce the ball," Blight added.
"I wonder how many are now in the seconds competitions around the country because they can't bounce the ball well.
"It's two or three nearly every game I watch, but if we get better decision-makers, we don't need to do that. We already throw it up, we're throwing it up around the ground anyhow."
