by Down the Hill » Wed Jul 31, 2019 2:59 pm
Cred to Broadview for at least raising this issue because proper timekeeping in A grade is the toughest game day job to do and the toughest to find someone willing to do it. I've done it a few times and detest it. You find yourself focussing on the umpires and the ball and don't really get to watch the game how you normally would.
In grades with flat qtrs. the rules currently allow time to stop if either timekeeper decides it should be stopped when a stretcher gets called for. This in itself is an odd rule because it says either timekeeper not both and I would have thought it should be the umpires call anyway. So if flat qtrs are implemented for A grade maybe change that rule to the discretion of the umpire for all grades.
But then you get the grounds where balls can be swallowed by trees, roads, creeks etc. and valuable time can be lost depending on whether the umpires wait until its retrieved or call for a new ball from the bench area. So does this mean a ball should be placed behind the goals for quick retrieval after the goal or behind and what if that ball hasn't yet been replaced when another score quickly occurs and the ball again goes into a difficult spot. And what if the ball has gone on the full or out of bounds and gets caught in a tree or under a car. Will benches start randomly kicking balls onto the field for a quick re-start even if the umpires haven't called for it - which will then slow things down even more due to the removal of that ball.
On the other hand, since they removed having to wait until flags are waved before bringing ball back into play after a behind and now with the quick play on out the goal square, many timekeepers would be missing the exact moment time should be stopped and re-started. Not to mention yellow cards being issued and play re-starting before the player has fully left the ground which is becoming more common. I reckon if you carefully watched the timekeep the qtrs. from the full video of a game on AdFL TV you will likely find that the timekeeping from the game would have a fair margin for error anyway.
It ultimately comes down to clubs and players being trusted to do the right thing, which in a way is not much different to now because despite the rules about both clubs supplying timekeepers it appears that most visiting clubs place trust in the home team timekeeper to do the task without someone from their club sitting next to him/her.