When AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon fronted the press today, it only poured even more fuel on the fire of an already chaotic umpiring debate in the footy world.
At today’s Gather Round 2025 launch in Adelaide, Dillon spoke to reporters after both public and media outrage over the officiating in the Essendon-Geelong clash on Saturday night.
Respected football journalists Mark Robinson and Gerard Whateley spoke passionately on AFL360 on Tuesday night about the issue, fuming that the AFL are “ignoring the issues staring at us”.
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“I don’t think it’ll sit comfortably with the footy public,” Robinson began.
“The interpretation change has left everybody confused.
“When it comes to these new adjudications, everyone is lost.”
Dillon defends standard of AFL umpiring | 02:44
Last night on AFL360, Essendon coach Brad Scott revealed that the AFL had reached out to him to admit that mistakes were made in his side’s loss to the Cats.
“When Brad Scott is philosophically opposed to the umpiring department of the AFL, if he can’t understand, how can the means of footy fans in the bleaches and at home are supposed to understand it? We’ve got a problem,” Robinson added.
“Why didn’t Andrew Dillon – if you were his script writer – instead say something like this: we love our umpires and we understand what’s going on at the moment, we’ve changed the rules mid-year, and we are having some teething problems. Just accepting what is going on at the game in the moment, but I assure you we are working through this, we are talking to the players and coaches, we are going to work our way through this together and come up with what we all believe to be the right scenarios and right decisions in all those scenarios.
“To say we don’t have any problems and it’s great, I think that ignores the issues staring at us.”
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Whateley believes the umpiring has been “suspect” all season and questioned whether those at the top of the AFL hierarchy were actually in attendance on Saturday night.
“I wonder how many of the AFL hierarchy were at the MCG on Saturday night, I feel like there’s a belief that they reckon this is a media beat up. Well, if you were in the stands, you can feel this build, it’s not confected, it’s real in our community,” Whateley started.
“I think the umpiring has been suspect in its key moments all year on all different rules, not just holding the ball. I do think you can’t abandon your umpires as the chief executive, so I totally get that, I think pretending everything’s as good as it’s ever been is pretending, that’s not it.”
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Whateley likened the issues facing the AFL world to what has happened in rugby union in the past two decades.
“I reckon there’s a cautionary tale in rugby union, if you watch rugby union now after 20 years of evolution you can’t follow what’s happening in the game anymore,” he said.
“It swings entirely on the penalties that are given, you can’t recognise them, you can’t understand them, you can’t follow it. You don’t want the game to become like that, you need holding the ball to look like holding the ball, you need push in the back to look like push in the back, you need deliberate rushed behind to be instantly recognised and paid in such a vein. That’s where I think the overall conversation is, you don’t want to leave the football public behind here as you go with an esoteric version of interpretations of the actual rules… we’re in high-risk territory.
“What we’ve seen at the flash points, what’s warranted, what’s necessary, the overall feel of the game, sometimes it’s there, sometimes we’re going with the literal application of what’s being said, sometimes we’re pretending they’re right, sometimes we’re justifying things, sometimes we’re acknowledging they’re wrong, I reckon it’s a bad confluence of factors at the moment which is worthy of a bit more thought than going you’ve all got nothing to talk about. There’s so much to talk about in footy right now, the fact that this is at the top of the agenda, that’s where the red flag is.”
Mass confusion over AFL umpiring | 02:59
Robinson implored the AFL to “stop treating fans like they’re stupid”.
“When you alienate the fans by saying the umpiring’s never been better, that’s treating the fans as if they’re dumb. Stop treating people like they’re stupid, we’ve got a problem,” he said.
“Admit there’s a problem, don’t sweep everything aside and say ‘you’re all stupid, we know best’ because no one wins with that. It’s our game, it’s everyone’s game, it’s not the AFL’s game, it’s the Australian Rules, it gets me angry, and I don’t get angry often. It annoys the hell out of me when people are treated with disdain.
“Rather than just saying ‘you’ve all got nothing to talk about’, the arrogance in that is too much for me.”