In the middle of the final quarter of Friday night’s Preliminary Final between Port Adelaide and Richmond, there was a significant decision made.
With the Tigers ahead by just four points with less than 10 minutes remaining, the ball fell into the path of Hamish Hartlett.
The Power defender desperately dove forward to knock the ball to the boundary line but was pinged for deliberate out of bounds.
The ensuing result was a snapped goal from Kane Lambert which put Richmond 10 points ahead.
There has already been plenty of fierce debate on social media regarding the call and again on SEN’s Whateley there were opinions divided.
Gerard Whateley is firm of the belief that the correct call was made while Port’s games record holder Kane Cornes feels there was no way to tell that Hartlett’s action was deliberate considering teammate Tom Rockliff was so close to the footy.
“I’m holding to the Hartlett deliberate call is right,” Whateley said.
“They got that 100 per cent right. That’s textbook deliberate out of bounds.
“Are you pushing the other way?”
Cornes replied: “I am. I’m pushing the other way.
“You can’t say that they got it 100 per cent right because should he have not paid that free kick, the umpire would have said, ‘Well, I didn’t pay it because he had a teammate in the vicinity’.
“So, there’s no black or white here and that’s what frustrates me.
“If he pays it, they justify it by saying it was his intention. But if he doesn’t pay it, they’ll say, ‘No, there was a teammate in the vicinity and he was half a metre away and he could have got it’.
“Play that in real time and you cannot tell me definitively that Hamish Hartlett’s intention was to go to the boundary line. He could have equally been going to Tom Rockliff who was right there.
“I’m holding firm on that. I can’t believe the umpire paid that in that moment in that game.”
Port Adelaide would get within four points courtesy of a Peter Ladhams goal around four minutes later, but the Tigers were able to kick two more behinds to hold on for a famous six-point win to book their spot in a third Grand Final in four years.