If it is theatre you are after, look no further than the holy grail of footy: the winning goal after the siren. For sheer exhilaration, hangers are great. For appreciators of physicality, a crunching tackle or hefty hip-and-shoulder are hard to beat. But for the thrill seekers who prefer a white-knuckle ride at the conclusion of four quarters, nothing trumps a major after the hooter to turn certain defeat into victory, or vice versa depending on your allegiance.
Such moments have supplied everlasting memories in the annals of Australian rules football. Think Gary Buckenara’s set shot to send Hawthorn into the 1987 VFL grand final at Melbourne’s expense. Think Malcolm Blight’s comet-like torpedo for North Melbourne against Carlton in 1976. These moments are enshrined in folklore and celebrated with the giddiness of a fisherman who finally landed the big one. How else would Blight’s long bomb at Princes Park go from an estimated 70 metres at the time to a “ratified” 80 metres decades later? These are the feats of which dreams are made. Ask any young footballer what he or she would like to achieve, and somewhere on the list will be kicking a winning goal after the siren.
Carlton’s Jack Newnes now has one item fewer on his bucket list after drilling a frightfully difficult shot to sink Fremantle at Optus Stadium on Saturday night. The last kick of the game might have followed two hours of grind, but all’s well that ends well – umpiring controversy, nigh on seven Dockers standing the mark, an angled kick from distance that warranted a difficulty level of 10. Theatre? It was a thespian’s wet dream. In a year of asterisks, however, one could argue Newnes’s winner should never have been taken in the first place.
For those with better things to do on a Saturday night, the facts: with 16 seconds remaining, Fremantle’s Matt Taberner was penalised for deliberate out-of-bounds before Andrew Brayshaw gave away a free kick down field for a late bump on Sam Docherty. As the latter’s kick forward sailed out of bounds on the full, Newnes, as well as Michael Gibbons, were near where the ball crossed the boundary line. On review, the ball – and the chance to win the game – should have been handed to Gibbons, not Newnes. “Gibbo’s eyes lit up but the umpire gave it to me,” Newnes told the ABC. Moreover, given Docherty’s kick failed to land in the field of play should the free kick have been brought back to him at centre wing?
On a knife’s edge the fate of matches like this rest. Had Newnes not leathered his set shot from hard on the boundary, fully 50 metres from home, the preceding chain of events would by dint be less momentous. Instead of rolling out the immortal one-size-fits-all response to adversity in pigskin pursuits – “that’s footy” – Dockers coach Justin Longmuir would have cut a more relieved figure post-game. Instead of saying he “sat there and enjoyed it”, Carlton’s David Teague might afterwards have said he “sat there and didn’t enjoy it”.
Coaches these days are not given to criticising whistle blowers. There is nothing to be gained from it and plenty to be lost. As Longmuir added: “I’m not going to sit here and talk about the umpires. They probably pulled one over the umpire’s eyes. But that’s alright. What’s done is done. I think they did a pretty good job of giving the right player the ball but I would have been asking our players to do exactly the same thing in the same situation.”
The AFL’s umpiring department will review the final moments at Optus Stadium. They will likely find that Docherty’s free kick down the ground was kosher but that Gibbons should have taken the deciding kick rather than Newnes. The subtext to their findings, as is the case every week, will be packaged into three simple words: umpires are human. The episode, however, will heighten calls for greater involvement of technology in the arbitration process.
In many ways, the AFL has been slower on the uptake than some other major sports in this regard. Contrast the use of player-initiated review and the interruption of video replay in rugby league and cricket, and the AFL looks positively backward by comparison. As it stands, the code’s goal review system is as far as it goes to overrule, or uphold, decisions made in the middle. But even that still needs plenty of refinement before it can be considered reliable.
Taking it a step further and using technology to meddle in the affairs of field umpires, as has been recommended by one major website covering AFL, is fraught with peril. When all is said and done, even with the benefit of forensic examination, we are still left with one person’s interpretation of events against another.
But never mind the want or need for exactitude in all matters officiation. Think of the theatre. Take away the glorious uncertainty of human error, and all we are left with is 36 players running around in front of a camera.
