Embrace the Humanity

I haven't got all touchy-feely on you - this is a blog post on footy. But as we enter the six month religious festival known as the home and away season, I just wanted to remind everyone of one thing. We're all human.

How does this relate to footy? Well, relating to those people we pay to watch play, another tactical revolution is underway in 2009 with the widespread adoption of a full-field zone defence, or "the cluster". Hawthorn used it to great effect last season.

Now, it is a system. That means that it is a way of given your blokes an advantage over and above whatever they have in the way of raw football skill. You can't teach someone to kick like Luke Hodge, but you can teach them to run to places on the ground like Luke Hodge.

It worked for Hawthorn: they're defending premiers. But the real reason it worked is because the Hawks knew they could implement the system, so they recruited players who had what no system could manufacture: skill. Birchall, Guerra, Young, Hodge, Bateman, etc.. the list of Hawks who are exquisite users of the ball is as long as your arm. In short, Hawthorn can beat a full-field zone defence with their skill.

And until someone else comes up with another system to beat this system, skill will have to do. Humanity over mechanical adherence to a system.

On the other side of the whistle, our umpires struggle, and understandably so. They're job is too bloody difficult, and I've umpired at a very low open age level, so I have some appreciation.

Take this year's most contentious rule change for example. The umpire must now make a judgement on whether a ball was forced deliberately through for a behind by a defensive player. In short, the umpire must make a judgement on the evidence available to him.

The other option was to stop the player who rushed the behind from being the player to kick it in. This would have stopped Brent Guerra rushing about 14 gazillion behinds in last year's Grand Final and hitting a target with the resulting kick-in every time. And it would have required no judgement on behalf of the umpire.

There's a reason it takes a long time to become a Magistrate or Justice - it's really hard, and we want someone really qualified to do it. Someone who has many years experience working with the law, and has demonstrated a long record of good judgement.

So, the answer to improving the quality of umpiring at the highest level is easy - reduce the number of judgement calls an umpire is required to make. Make the game easier to umpire.

Firstly, minimise the number of times an umpire has to judge intent. Deliberate out-of-bounds and rushed behinds fall into this category.

Secondly, train the umpires to only act on decisive visual evidence. This would eradicate the holding-the-ball decisions when a player's back is to the umpire, and he cannot even see the ball.

Thirdly, get them to do much more match simulation at training, with players of any level. Just get blokes doing match simulation, and send around umpires to all the clubs around the place to do 30 minutes of match simulation twice a week.

We only have humans to do the job, so make it easier. The players have a system, but the umpires just want to rest on their skill. The game will be the poorer for it.