Alastair Clarkson has backed the rule change after the Hawks rushed 11 behinds in the GF agianst Geelong, http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,24414750-19742,00.html

Do you think a change is needed? if so then how should the new rule work?
3 points? bounce at the top of the square? bounce 25m out? What is the best plan?

The game is fine as it is. We don't need new rules. All it would do is create controversy when an umpire call one deliberately rushed and a team loses but the replays show that it was very unlikely that the player was in fact deliberately pushing the ball across the line.

Sometimes the umpires struggle to see if a ball is touched or not or whether a player had prior opportunity or not and so on all this would do is make the umpires job harder.

What about for the ones that players handball or kick over the line? Maybe the rule should only apply when a player is not being tackled? Then the umpire has a better chance to see it and the attacking team has a chance to get the ball back. I see what you mean though, new rules do cause some problems.

So the players will stand just inside the line and get pushed across so it will still be the same. It is more important that the AFL do something about the umpires interpreting the rules the same so it becomes a bit more consistent instead of each umpire having his own interpretation and there being inconsistencies across the ground in the one match.

Yeah your right that is the worst problem, if they fix umpire interpretation, i wouldn't winge about anything. Never going to happen with Demetriou in charge though.

Make the umpires professional. If they have to pay them more so be it but in a professional sport the umpires should be professional but they are not.

I thought they got payed ok, I dont really know how much they get, but I thought it was an ok wage. I think they should just get dropped if they make bad decisions, just like a player would be and if a young umpire is doing well in the state leagues, then promote him to the AFL. I dont mind if we need to pay them more, but not if they keep making bad decisions. What about a pay bonus for good umpiring for a whole season? That could work.

Change the value of behinds, rushed or otherwise, to 2 points. Simple.

It would still happen. Wouldn't solve anything.

Compared to their daytime jobs they don't. Compared to a footballer they don't. Compared to an unskilled labourer they do.

When you say bad decisions do you mean a bad decision that you have had the chance to look at a replay from multiple angles and in slow motion or do you mean a decision that you have seen from the exact same angle as the umpire and made in the exact same space of time which is about a second.

I agree umpires do not get everything right but if you compared them to a player they probably make the same amount of mistakes. An umpire has a split second to make a decision and with good reason they are not going to reverse that.

There should be some sort of progression route for umpires but they need to train on the same things in learning what is and isn't and they need to operate from the same page.

The biggest issue that fans see is they see a free kick that is not awarded and abuse the umpire but do not take into account where the umpire is standing and the angle he sees it from and then factor in was someone blocking his view or partially blocking it.

A bad decision for me is one that looks wrong live, It's hard to explain but it just looks wrong. I don't get to go to games much because I dont live in Melbourne. So I see the decisions from the camera angle on TV, not quite the same angle as the umpire, but it's the only one I've got. If an umpire says to a player that he didn't see a free, I'm ok with that. It's the ones where the umps get it completely wrong that p!ss me off, you must have seen them. Also i dont think angles have a lot to do with it because when the umps get it wrong, the whole crowd boos. They are all seeing it from many different angles and they seem to get it right more than the umpires. Do you think any of the AFL umpires are show ponys? I reckon some of them just pay free kicks to get their face/Voice on TV and some of the 50's that they give for abuse are just shocking, for example Travis Cloke had a 50 paid agianst him for pointing at an umpire this year, thats all he did, you could see that his lips didn't even move at all. The umpire then said "thats 50 for pointing at me", no joke. I wish I could remember which game, it was somewhere between about round 12 and 18. That sort of thing just ruins our game, I reckon.

I don't think an umpire makes a decision just to get their face/voice/head on tv because at some point they get to make a real decision that achieves the same result.

I think you are underselling the angle aspect. The umpire gets one angle to see if a player is holding on the other side where the umpire can not see he can not make a call if he does he is guessing and that would be worse.

The Travis Cloke one you mention I can not recall but the AFL did say that demonstrative protests would be punished by a 50m penalty. By pointing at the umpire that is demonstrative and under the rules a 50m penalty and from this I would have no problem.

Crowds react to other parts of the crowd and if they feel aggrieved regardless. No offence but crowd reaction is hardly the best indicator of umpires decisions.

I don't think an umpire makes a decision just to get their face/voice/head on tv because at some point they get to make a real decision that achieves the same result.

I think you are underselling the angle aspect. The umpire gets one angle to see if a player is holding on the other side where the umpire can not see he can not make a call if he does he is guessing and that would be worse.

The Travis Cloke one you mention I can not recall but the AFL did say that demonstrative protests would be punished by a 50m penalty. By pointing at the umpire that is demonstrative and under the rules a 50m penalty and from this I would have no problem.

Crowds react to other parts of the crowd and if they feel aggrieved regardless. No offence but crowd reaction is hardly the best indicator of umpires decisions.[/quote]

Umpires do guess a lot of the time when they think a player has been pushed in the back in a marking contest, it's one of the reasons that their interpretation of the rules differs from umpire to umpire.
It's human nature to crave attention and thats why the umps sometimes make calls to get their face on TV or to prove a point to the players around them(like the Cloke one), it doesn't matter how many times they get to do it, it feels just as good every time for them. All the players stop and listen to the umpire, the crowd reacts and the ump knows for sure that the camera is on him. Are you trying to tell me that some people wouldn't enjoy that on some level, I reckon some do. We need to stamp it out, in the past umpires would get smacked around by players, I'm not saying we should go back to that, far from it. I just think the AFL should try and stamp out this cocky attitude that some umpires have developed over the time they have been a protected species. Surely you've seen some form of it. What if one of these dodgy 50's cost Richmond a grand final win? You wouldn't like it then. I shouldn't have used Travis as an example, I know Tiger fans don't like him.
I wouldn't trust a crowds reaction for just one decision, but over many you begin to see a bit of a pattern, in that the crowd boos when it seems the umpire is being a bit of a show pony, they boo at other things as well, but they always boo at umpires who think they are more important than the game, every single time. Watch out for it next year.

1.25 points, just to see everyone with their footy records counting, looking up in dismay and then going bald. Plus the commentators "and they lead halftime by .75 points! What a close game!"

Why not pull the goal square behind the line and if the player rushes a behind by just stepping over it's free reign to charge and beat the snot of him.

Well it'd be fun, since then you'd have someone like Bowden stepping over the line thinking who he's going to give it off to and then suddenly he gets crunched by a Brown / Bradshaw / Hall or something.

And another idea I had, if they rush a behind through handball or kicks or what have you and it goes into the crowd, multi ball it, where like canons pop up and fire out a ball some where on the field and that's where play continues! But to make things interesting random balls will also come out to keep everyone on their toes!

Or maybe bounce it at the 50 so that way the attacking team still have a scoring opportunity and the defending team clear the immediate impending doom.

I like the multi ball idea, but I'd use it when teams are flooding or slowing down the play by chiping around or by causing stoppage after stoppage. So if there's been less than 15 goals for both clubs combined, at 3 quarter time, then we have a multi ball last quarter. Teams would soon learn an attacking style of play, because who knows what would happen with all those balls going everywhere, could be fun.

The reason sides so readily rush behinds is to regain control of the pill. Take that "reward" away and the so-called issue may well disappear.

If there was to be a rule change, I'd have a bounce on the hotspot - but only if the rushed point had been kicked or handballed through.

At this stage though, I'd leave as is.

Yes but I would keep the existing 1 point rule. However if the umpire deems the behind is deliberately rushed and this can only be if it is not "off hands" then this results in prior opportunity. immediately the player therefore steps over the goal line with the ball he must dispose of the ball by foot in a forward direction and not to himself , or else the goal square protection is removed. That is the attacking player can enter the square and tackle him.A good tackle would be holding the ball, the same as the gathering the ball in the ruck rule ,The attacking player does not have to stand a further 10 metre out when the umpire calls" deliberate, all clear!"In a deliberate call the player cannot play on until the umpire calls all clear. If he plays on before the call the whistle is blown and he must go behind the goal line again.
This would mean the defending team is actually under more pressure conceding a behind than if it took a chance and played on towards the boundary line or seeked a team mate further upfield.

Do you mean that if a behind was deliberately rushed, then the full forward could stand at the top of the goal square, instead of 10m out? and that the defender could not play on, he would have to kick over the mark instead. Then yeah I think that could work, we wouldn't have to change the score boards and it would give more advantage to the attacking team. It would make it very hard for teams to clear the ball, so players wouldn't do it, unless they had to to stop a goal. It wouldn't be much of a change really. Good idea, I reckon.