Thanks Mr Butterworth for your kind words. Good to see you enjoyed the game.
Still very raw for me. One of the most disappointing losses I have ever played in. Could have gone either way and shall we say that a few chances were converted by Mitchell Park but perhaps not recorded and one or two TTG goals were recorded but perhaps weren't actually converted
Still we should have been up by plenty more at 3/4 time to make that sort of stuff irrelevant. Credit to TTG, we could never shake them despite being regularly up by 1-2-3 goals. They came home like a steam train and we couldn't stop them.
Umpiring was an absolute shambles. For both sides. My opponent told me that they were the same ones that umpired the ML/TTG game and that similar crap occurred. I am normally measured with my posts on umpires and the like as they more often than not do an OK job considering their experience/age/fitness but on Saturday they exhibited a repeated, systematic, basic lack of understanding of the game. It wasn't missing free kicks or being in the wrong position, it was seeing it, processing what happened and blatantly making the wrong call.
1. If a player ducks in a tackle at the last moment, it is not a head high free kick. I know we nicked a couple of goals from that one.
2. If a player sees an opposition tackle coming, bends down and gets tackled around the waist whilst his head is in the guys stomach - it is not a head high free kick.
3. If a player attempts a mark, does not put his hands on his opposition and touches the ball, it cannot be "in the back" - even if it was spectacular.
4. Players need more than 0.002 milliseconds to dispose of the ball - it is not holding the ball if they get tackled immediately upon gaining possession.
We had a trainee kid aged all of 15 for the Flinders game. He did a great job compared to the umpires on Saturday. I think some re-training needs to be attempted.
