It has come to my attention tonight that a little-known change has been made to the official rules of the AFL. I am not sure when this was introduced, but the rule seems to be that when playing in Bribane, Lions players shall be entited to tackle opponents without the ball, push opponents in the back, and throw the ball without penalty. Meanwhile, if there is a contested ball in the Lions’ forward 50 and the Lions fail to take possession, a free kick shall be awarded to the Lions player closest to the ball.

Addendum: Having just seen the final quarter of the match, I think Brisbane Lions supporters would have every reason to make the same point in reverse. I’ve now seen this pattern emerge many times this season. One team, usually the home team from a one- or two-team city, will get a ridiculous umpiring advantage for three quarters. Then in the last quarter, almost every decision goes against the home team. What I think is happening is that the umpires are being swayed by the home crowd. (This is a natural process and occurs in almost all team sports, but in AFL the advantage is ridiculous, often a 50% or greater advantage in free kicks, and the most contentious decisions almost always seem to take place at critical points in the match.) At the three-quarter break, I suspect the umpires check the free kick count and think “Gee, there’s a big discrepancy here, and I did give a few frees that in hindsight should perhaps have been play-on and let a few go that I really should have given the other way.” And the last quarter is full of evener-uppers.

I think the AFL should be putting a lot more into the umpiring — it seems to me to be the only aspect of the game that has not become markedly more professional over the last thirty years. One of the things they should be doing is to train umpires not to be swayed by crowds. That is, they need the help of sports psychologists. The other thing that should happen, to be fair to umpires given that AFL is one of the most difficult games in the world to referee, is to tighten up the rules and make them less subjective. I’m not talking about major experimental rule changes (which have generally failed dismally in the past), but in adopting some of the philosophy of American football and rugby and helping umps make decisions by adopting clear, concise definitions of play. For instance, in rugby and American football, whether a ball is out of bounds depends on where the feet of the player holding the ball are. In Aussie rules, it is based on the position of the ball, which means a player can be completely over the boundary line but hold the ball inside and continue play. This would be hard enough to judge on a rectangular field, but AFL fields are ovals, so a boundary umpire has to make a decision about the position of a ball relative to a curved line as it is being held aloft and often at arm’s length by a player up to 50 metres away. No wonder they make so many mistakes. It’s simply not cognitively possible to get this right.