Bring Back Three Umpires? One Ex-Whistler Reckons So

Finally, Someone in the Umpiring World Talks Sense

I don’t agree with much that comes out of Ikon Park these days — or whatever they’re calling headquarters this week — but when a former umpire steps up and says the four-umpire system is bloated, overcrowded and doing the game more harm than good, well, I’m all ears. Because that bloke is onto something that a good chunk of long-suffering footy fans have been mumbling about for the better part of a decade.

The suggestion is straightforward enough: ditch one of the field umpires, go back to three, and see if the contest opens up again. Back in my day — and yes, I know that phrase makes younger readers roll their eyes — three umpires was plenty. The game moved, the ball got out of congestion, and you didn’t have four blokes in yellow tripping over each other around every stoppage like a confused cheer squad that took a wrong turn on the race.

What the Former Umpire Actually Said — and Why It Matters

The view put forward by the ex-whistler is essentially this: four umpires hasn’t cleaned up the decision-making the way the AFL hoped it would when the experiment was introduced, and in fact it may be actively contributing to congestion by inadvertently signalling to players that the middle of the ground is always going to be managed, always going to be policed, always going to have a set of eyes close by — so why bother spreading out?

Now, I’m not one to take every ex-footballer or ex-official’s opinion as gospel. Plenty of people who played or officiated the game have ideas that belong firmly in the bin. But this one has legs, and the reason it has legs is that it connects two things that the AFL has been wringing its hands about simultaneously: the umpiring workload question and the congestion crisis. If one former insider is prepared to say publicly that those two problems might actually be linked, that’s worth a serious conversation.

Whether Gill McLachlan’s successors at headquarters are capable of having that serious conversation is, of course, another matter entirely.

The VFL Managed Fine With Three, Didn’t It?

Here’s what I know. The VFL — and yes, I’ll keep calling it that, the name change never sat right with me — ran three field umpires for years and the game worked. It wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is, but the flow was there. Players had to find space because the game rewarded finding space. There wasn’t a man in yellow at every single contest ready to blow the whistle the moment someone breathed on an opponent.

The move to four was sold to us as a modernisation. More coverage, fewer mistakes, better positioning. And look, I understand the theory. The ground is 160 metres long, the game is faster than it was in 1985, and four sets of eyes should theoretically be better than three. In theory. But football isn’t played in theory, and the way the game has actually evolved under four umpires — tighter, more congested, more reliant on stoppages than on run and carry — should at least prompt the question of whether the cure has contributed to the disease.

Congestion and Umpiring: A Connection Worth Exploring

Think about it this way. When you have four umpires crammed into the same patches of grass as forty-four players, you create a kind of invisible pressure on the contest. Umpires have to stay out of the way, which means they’re constantly adjusting their positioning, and players — who are smart, professional athletes — subconsciously structure their movement patterns around what they expect to be policed.

More umpires means more stoppages get monitored, which means more stoppages get paid, which means teams are conditioned to play for stoppages rather than away from them. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s not malice, it’s just cause and effect, and it’s the sort of cause and effect that the suits in head office seem absolutely determined not to look at because acknowledging it would mean admitting that one of their tinkerings had unintended consecquences.

The former umpire’s point, as I understand it, is that three officials on the field actually trusted players and the contest more. You had to let some things go. The game breathed. And when the game breathes, it’s better to watch.

The AFL’s Tinkering Problem

My core frustration — and Carlton fans know I have a few of those — is that the AFL cannot leave well enough alone. Every off-season brings a new rule, a new directive, a new emphasis, a new interpretation, and half the time the fellows implementing those changes are working at cross-purposes to the fellows who implemented last year’s changes.

The four-umpire system was a tinker. The protected zone was a tinker. The stand rule changes were a tinker. The tweaks to holding the ball interpretations were a tinker. Stack enough tinkerings on top of each other and eventually you’ve got a game that nobody — not the players, not the coaches, not the umpires, and certainly not the bloke in row Q with a meat pie and a flat beer — fully understands anymore.

Going back to three umpires wouldn’t be tinkering. It would be un-tinkering. And un-tinkering is almost always the braver, smarter call.

What Would Three Umpires Actually Change?

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that dropping one umpire instantly transforms the game into free-flowing end-to-end footy. The issues with congestion are deep-rooted and involve interchange rotations, defensive systems, and coaching philosophies that won’t change overnight. But changing the umpiring setup could be one lever — among several — that shifts the game’s culture back toward rewarding the player who finds space and uses it.

Under three umpires, there’s more ground to cover and, inevitably, more discretion about what gets paid. A certain amount of physical contest — the kind that used to define Australian football and still defines what most fans actually want to see — might get waved on rather than whistled. Players who know they have to earn their free kicks, rather than waiting for a marginal call in a pack, might actually try to get out of the pack.

And you know what? That sounds like the game I grew up watching at Princes Park, rugged up in the outer with my old man, watching the Blues run it out of defence and dare the opposition to stop them. Bliss.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But Keep the Conversation Going

Will the AFL seriously consider reverting to the three-umpire system? Probably not any time soon. There are too many entrenched interests, too many people whose careers and reputations are tied to the current setup, and too much institutional inertia for genuine reform to happen quickly. The AFL Commission moves at the speed of a wet Saturday afternoon at Arden Street in July.

But the fact that a credible voice from inside the umpiring world is prepared to put this view publicly is not nothing. It adds weight to an argument that fans have been making informally for years, and it might — might — be the start of a proper review that goes beyond the usual window-dressing.

I’ve been watching this game for fifty-odd years. I’ve seen it get things wrong and I’ve seen it eventually, grudgingly, get them right again. The three-umpire system is one of those things it got right before someone decided to fix what wasn’t broken. Time to have a good hard look at putting it back the way it was.

Or they’ll ignore all of it, introduce a new protected zone variation in November, and we’ll all be back here complaining about the same things next September. Either way, Trev will be watching.