Umpire Dean Margetts has explained the holding the ball rule, which has caused plenty of consternation among footy fans in recent weeks.
Margetts umpired the Essendon v Richmond Dreamtime match at Optus Stadium on Saturday night in which there were a number of questionable decisions and missed calls evident throughout.
Some of those decisions, or non decisions, appeared to surprise many in the crowd and were discussed heatedly on social media at the time and in the aftermath.
With those incidents in mind, Margetts explained the thought process and subsequent decisions made by umpires in such situations.
“There’s a lot of different cues for holding the ball,” he said on SEN WA’s Sporting Goss.
“The perfect tackle doesn’t mean it is a free kick. If I haven’t had prior opportunity and I get tackled, all I have to do is make a genuine attempt to handball or kick. If I miss that, it’s play on.
“If there’s no prior opportunity we must then see a genuine attempt to dispose (of the ball). If we see that, it will be play on.”
Specifically touching on some 360 and even 720-degree tackles which were judged as play on, Margetts added: “The rule is, have you had reasonable time?"
“If we deem the 360 to be reasonable time, which I don’t think it is… There was (also) a 720, but it happens really quickly.
“It’s an interpretational decision. My concern is, and I heard a lot of social media after Dreamtime that we might have got a couple of decisions incorrect, but it’s generally the way people want it umpired, not the way umpires are instructed to umpire.
“As I say, there are so many cues. Prior opportunity, illegal disposal, have you dived on the ball, is the tackle legal, and this is all happening in a split second.
“It’s very easy in your comfy chair at home to go, ‘oh, that’s a poor decision’, but I’d love to take people on a little two-minute tour of an AFL game just to get an idea of it. I’m not making excuses for errors, but it is a lot more difficult than what people may think.
“Don’t criticise the umpire because we’re educated and we’re paid to get it right.”
The veteran umpire also gave an insight into the officiating of the incorrect disposal rule.
“It must be an illegal disposal, so that’s a clenched fist or anything below the knee,” he said further.
“It’s the prior opportunity or no prior opportunity that comes into it. If I’ve picked up the ball and had a bounce and then I get tackled, if I get even a little toe to it, that’s deemed a legal disposal.
“To the people in the back row at Optus, they’re going that’s holding the ball, but he’s still actually physically kicked the ball.
“If it misses my boot, 100 per cent that’s holding the ball. What people forget is a little ‘clenched-fister’ is actually a legal disposal. You can’t pay a free kick for that.”
This wasn't paid holding the ball. 🧐#AFLDonsTigers pic.twitter.com/7ksSFP8Duu
— SEN 1116 (@1116sen) June 5, 2021
Free kick differential is another topic often spoken about in today’s game and Margetts insists it never rears its head among the umpiring fraternity.
“Never mentioned, never discussed,” he said.
“I’m not going to lie, occasionally when you face up at the scoreboard you see it, but does it affect our processing or decision-making? It just doesn’t.
“Putting my umpiring boss hat on for the WAFL umpires, I get that from clubs. ‘It was 31 to 17’, it doesn’t matter. It could be 40 to five. If they’re warranted or they’re correct, we’re just assessing correct, missed for unwarranted. That’s all we worry about.
“Sometimes absolutely we make mistakes but it’s not a conscious effort to level up the count because that’s not how it works.”
As for umpire microphones being used to capture audio within the game, he supports it for a couple of different reasons.
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“When Nick Vlastuin reminded a player maybe he wasn’t doing the right thing and that comes through on my umpires mic,” Margetts added.
“It sticks with the player who says that. They’ve got to live with that and work through it as things that are said in the heat of battle.
“If we watch TV without we’d be like, ‘what’s the free kick for?’. There was a free kick I paid against Dustin Martin on the weekend for a swinging arm to the chest of Darcy Parish. You wouldn’t see it on the vision, so sometimes you’ve got to explain it, not just for the people on the field but for the stakeholders at home.
“Jeff Dalgleish paid a free kick off the ball behind me so we try to articulate what’s being said. It’s a free kick, an out of zone umpire has paid it for a high tackle, and everyone goes, ‘ok, we get it’
“I think the education is a really important part of the microphone system that we use.”