St Kilda coach Brett Ratten has thrown his support behind the AFL’s strong stance on umpire dissent, saying it is necessary to help fix the severe umpire shortage at community level.
Some coaches have given the topic a wide berth as it’s blown up in recent weeks, with 50m penalties against Brisbane’ and Hawthorn, in particular, causing a significant stir.
But Ratten was emphatic that the league’s new football boss, Brad Scott, had made the right call with this new interpretation at the highest level in the sport.
“I think it’s fantastic. I really applaud the AFL for making a stand,” he said.
“We’re 6000 umpires short at community level and we need umpires out there. I went the other week to watch my son play and there was a 15-year-old umpire – and every decision he made; nobody booed or cried out.
“They just let him umpire and it was so pleasing to see and that’s what we want.
“It’s going to take a little bit of time to get used to it, but you look at other sports and other codes in Australia and around the world – the respect for the umpire is critical.
“We need to start at the top, which is the AFL, and hopefully within a short period we see it at local level and umpires aren’t getting abused and ridiculed, (because) we need umpires to facilitate the game and it is the damn hardest job there is.”
Pushed on whether there needed to be more commonsense with the interactions between players and umpires, as Sydney coach John Longmire suggested, Ratten did not back down.
“We’ve got all week (to get clarification), haven’t we? You’ve got Monday to Friday,” he said.
“We’ve got all week to clarify certain things with the umpiring (with) Dan Richardson and Damian Farrow.
“If we put anything in for clarification, they’re straight back with an email to say, ‘Yep, we might have got this one wrong’ or ‘This was this and that’ – we know exactly where we sit.
“So there are opportunities to get clarification and I just think image of the game, we need to look after the umpires.”
Ratten also said it was time to spin the narrative from a negative to a positive one when it came to umpires and other facets of the game.
They’re going to miss some and they’re going to get some,” he said.
“A player’s going to miss a goal when he should kick it. The coach is going to keep a player on too (long) or give the wrong message or do something. We’re all going to have a blue in the game.
“But I think if we keep focusing on the mistakes, you’ll always see them. Let’s focus on the good things. How many good decisions did they make? It shouldn’t always be, ‘That’s a bad decision’.
“We need to support the umpires more at clubland and then even in the supporters; we need to look after the umpires and respect everybody who’s part of the game.”
