AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon has insisted that the standard of umpiring remains as good as ever, despite a category of decisions angering fans.
Dillon fronted the media on Tuesday to defend new umpires chief Steve McBurney amid widespread criticism of calls that have impacted the outcome of a number of games already this season.
‘I spend a lot of time with the umpires, talking to Steve McBurney who’s heading it up, but also individual umpires,’ Dillon said.
‘Our umpires, it’s an incredibly tough game to umpire, but we’ve got elite decision-makers, they’re elite athletes, but they continue to work their craft.
‘All sports are really difficult to officiate, but I think our sport is one of the hardest ones.
‘What our focus on is actually just preparing our umpires and making sure we get the processes right and continue to umpire as well as we can.
‘It’s as good as it’s ever been, the umpiring.
‘We’re in the second year on the four-umpire system as well, so we’re on a journey with the four-umpire system.’
Dillon theorised that the increased scrutiny on umpires was a by-product of a competitive league this season.
Andrew Dillon’s comments on Tuesday have drawn criticism
The AFL chief executive defended controversial umpiring throughout the 2024 season
‘The competition is so tight,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand why, but there’s always been a focus on umpiring — I’m pretty old and it has been around for as long as I’ve been around and will continue to be.
‘But I think because the competition is so tight that maybe there is an increased focus on the umpires.’
But Dillon’s comments have not sat well with fans and pundits. On AFL360 on Tuesday night, Mark Robinson and Gerard Whateley took issue with the AFL boss’s remarks.
‘I don’t think it’ll sit comfortably with the footy public,’ Robinson began.
‘The interpretation change has left everybody confused.
‘When it comes to these new adjudications, everyone is lost.’
‘When Brad Scott is philosophically opposed to the umpiring department of the AFL, if he can’t understand, how can the means of footy fans in the bleaches and at home are supposed to understand it? We’ve got a problem,’ Robinson added.
‘Why didn’t Andrew Dillon – if you were his script writer – instead say something like this: we love our umpires and we understand what’s going on at the moment, we’ve changed the rules mid-year, and we are having some teething problems. Just accepting what is going on at the game in the moment, but I assure you we are working through this, we are talking to the players and coaches, we are going to work our way through this together and come up with what we all believe to be the right scenarios and right decisions in all those scenarios.
‘To say we don’t have any problems and it’s great, I think that ignores the issues staring at us.’
Teams have been left enraged by divisive calls that have impacted match outcomes
Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson were not impressed by Dillon’s comments
Whateley added that the standard of umpiring has been ‘suspect’ all season and said the AFL is at risk of going into decline like rugby union if it does not act.
‘I wonder how many of the AFL hierarchy were at the MCG on Saturday night, I feel like there’s a belief that they reckon this is a media beat up. Well, if you were in the stands, you can feel this build, it’s not confected, it’s real in our community,’ Whateley said.
‘I think the umpiring has been suspect in its key moments all year on all different rules, not just holding the ball. I do think you can’t abandon your umpires as the chief executive, so I totally get that, I think pretending everything’s as good as it’s ever been is pretending, that’s not it.’
‘I reckon there’s a cautionary tale in rugby union, if you watch rugby union now after 20 years of evolution you can’t follow what’s happening in the game anymore,’ he said.
‘It swings entirely on the penalties that are given, you can’t recognise them, you can’t understand them, you can’t follow it. You don’t want the game to become like that, you need holding the ball to look like holding the ball, you need push in the back to look like push in the back, you need deliberate rushed behind to be instantly recognised and paid in such a vein. That’s where I think the overall conversation is, you don’t want to leave the football public behind here as you go with an esoteric version of interpretations of the actual rules… we’re in high-risk territory.
‘What we’ve seen at the flash points, what’s warranted, what’s necessary, the overall feel of the game, sometimes it’s there, sometimes we’re going with the literal application of what’s being said, sometimes we’re pretending they’re right, sometimes we’re justifying things, sometimes we’re acknowledging they’re wrong, I reckon it’s a bad confluence of factors at the moment which is worthy of a bit more thought than going you’ve all got nothing to talk about. There’s so much to talk about in footy right now, the fact that this is at the top of the agenda, that’s where the red flag is.’
