Joining the chorus of outrage towards the umpiring dissent rule, premiership Hawk Campbell Brown has come out and slammed the rule, labelling it a “disgrace”.
The AFL has been actively stressing the importance of respect towards umpires and whilst agreeing that players shouldn’t be threatening or demonstrative, Brown says the game is in bad shape if players can’t question a decision.
“I think it’s disgrace, the game is in bad shape if umpires are interpreting players quizzically putting their hands out from quizzical decisions, quite often wrong decisions,” Brown said on SEN.
“If you’re not able to just gesticulate with your hands, don’t abuse umpires and don’t swear at them – we get that, don’t be threatening or demonstrative in your behaviour toward them – we get that.
“They look ridiculous when they blow their whistle, give a 50m and go ‘excuse me 50m penalty, you put your hands out’, do you know how insipid that makes them sound.
“The reason people love this sport is because they can be passionate, they see players with passion in the moment, adrenaline is flowing – you’ve got 70,000 people there with the game on the line and the umpire pays a free kick and the crowd gets up, you want to see that.
“Athletes that wear their heart on their sleeves are the ones that are the most admired and loved.
“I get that what happens at AFL level trickles down to grassroots level and there’s a reason why this big push is there … you can tell when a player is being aggressively demonstrative, but surely you’re allowed an interaction with an umpire with hand gestures and thing likes that.”
The pre-season crackdown was announced by the AFL’s GM of Football Brad Scott, and Brown hints at the irony that Scott is actively trying to crackdown dissent, saying he can't remember a player who played with more aggression.
“Brad Scott, who’s the new GM of footy, I can’t remember a player that played with more aggression and was always playing on the line in terms of what he said to umpires and what he did,” he said.
"Dan Richardson (Head of Umpiring) who’s the boss of the umpires and has been involved in footy forever, they should have a better understanding of this.
“What it does, it takes away the respect of umpires because the AFL community, ex footy legends, the average punter in the street, they look at the umpires and go ‘how pathetic are they’, that’s doing the opposite of respecting the umpires.”
Asked if he was blaming the umpires or the AFL for getting to this point, Brown says both parties are at fault.
“Both, I think the AFL comes to the umpires and say, ‘we’re going to crack down on abuse and demonstrative behaviour’ and then the umpire boss goes ‘what does that look like’, swearing, yep, abuse, yep,” Brown continued.
“Somewhere along the line, they’ve decided that it’s dissent, any form of dissent is going to be 50.
“Some umpires are interpreting (dissent) and some umpires aren’t, now we go ‘we can’t shrug our shoulders and put our hands out’.”
With crowd numbers down to start the year, Brown has posed the question of whether the poor umpiring is a contributing factor.
“Numbers are down and getting driven down every single round,” the ex-Hawk and Sun said.
“Is it because people have had an absolute gutful of the umpires, the excessive 50m penalties and they’re just not enjoying the sport as much so therefore they’re going to watch it home and flick it off when they get annoyed.
“A lot of people aren’t enjoying footy as much because of things like this … It’s a really tough game, AFL, it sucks the life out of you when you give a 50m penalty for something as innocuous as shrugging your shoulders.”