Fines Over Bans? Head Office Lets Itself Down Again

There are two kinds of decisions that come out of AFL House — the ones that make you scratch your head, and the ones that make you put the bloody kettle on and stare out the window for ten minutes wondering what happened to the game you grew up loving. The rulings handed down following that Suns-Pies melee, in which both Brayden Maynard and Touk Miller were found to have made contact with an umpire, fall firmly into the second category.

The Rulings: A Fine Line Between Deterrent and Doormat

Let’s get the facts straight before anyone starts lobbing legal letters. The MRO charged both Maynard and Miller in connection with the incident, and after the process ran its course, the outcome was fines rather than suspensions. Not a week on the sidelines. Not a fortnight to sit and think about your choices. A fine. A financial inconvenience for blokes on AFL wages that probably stings about as much as a paper cut stings a bricklayer.

Now, I want to be fair here — the Tribunal found what it found, the process is the process, and I am not about to sit here and say either player is guilty of something the official verdict didn’t establish. That’s not how it works and that’s not how I operate. But in my view, and it is very much my view, the idea that making contact with an umpire — the one person on that oval whose authority is supposed to be absolutely sacred — warrants nothing more than a dip in the wallet raises serious eyebrows. It raised mine so high I nearly lost them.

Back in my day, and I know exactly how that sounds, the umpire was untouchable. Not just in the rulebook sense — in the cultural sense. You could disagree with a free kick from here to the outer at Princes Park and back again, but you did not put your hands on the man in white. That was understood. The fact that we now need the MRO to adjudicate on it and the penalty is measured in dollars rather than games tells you something about where we have drifted.

What This Means for the Umpires Themselves

I have had my differences with umpiring decisions over the years — ask anyone who has sat near me at a VFL game, and I use that term deliberately because some habits die hard — but those differences have always been about the call, never about the person making it. Umpires run kilometres, they cop abuse from every angle, and they are doing a genuinely difficult job in real time without the benefit of a slow-motion replay.

When the governing body sends a message that contact with an umpire is a fineable rather than a suspendable offence, what does that communicate to every player in the competition? You could argue it communicates that the line, while real, has a relatively modest toll attached to it. Plenty of fans reckon that’s not good enough, and I happen to be one of them. The umpires deserve better from the people who run this game.

Port Adelaide Get the Job Done Against the Roos

Shifting to the weekend’s footy — and there was some decent footy to talk about, even if the umpiring news has dominated my thinking — Port Adelaide accounted for North Melbourne by 21 points in what I’m told was a hard-fought affair rather than a procession. The Power had to work for it, which is no great surprise given that North, for all their struggles with the ladder, have shown this season that they are not rolling over for anyone.

Port’s midfield brigade did what Port’s midfield brigade does — they competed hard, they won the contested ball in bursts, and they ground out the victory the way a team with finals ambitions needs to. A 21-point win is not a thrashing but it is four points and at this time of year, with September starting to loom in everyone’s peripheral vision, four points is four points. The Power will take it.

North, meanwhile, find themselves in familiar territory — competitive enough to keep it honest but not quite able to close out the teams above them. There is talent there, and anyone who watched their younger players this season can see the rebuild is genuinely progressing, but the gap between promising and premiership-ready remains a considerable one. Give it time. The Roos faithful have patience born of long practice.

St Kilda Tear Essendon Apart at the Seams

If Port versus North was a contest, St Kilda versus Essendon was something else entirely. The Saints, who have had a season of considerable promise and occasionally considerable frustration, apparently ran riot against the Bombers in a performance that will have their supporters feeling very good indeed about the run home.

Essendon, for their part, will look at this one and wince. They have the talent to be a finals team — I genuinely believe that — but performances like this one remind you that talent and consistency are very different animals. A blowout loss against a Saints side that is peaking at the right time is the sort of result that can shake a group’s confidence heading into the buisiest part of the schedule, and the Bombers cannot afford too many of those.

As for St Kilda — the hallmarks of a well-coached, physically imposing side were on display. Their forwards were at it, their defensive structure held firm when it needed to, and when Essendon tried to push back the Saints had the answers. Ross Lyon has that group believing, which counts for a lot in a long season.

The Bigger Picture: Respect for the Contest

What links the umpiring rulings and the weekend’s results, in my admittedly grumpy mind, is a question about standards. The contest — the physical, honest, courageous contest that has always been the heartbeat of Australian football — is worth protecting. That means protecting the players who throw themselves into it, the umpires who manage it, and the integrity of the decisions that flow from it.

When the AFL tinkers with rules, softens penalties, or — in my view — sends mixed messages through its tribunal outcomes, it chips away at something that took a very long time to build. I am not suggesting the sky is falling in. Port Adelaide grinding out a win over North Melbourne on a Saturday afternoon is a reminder that the game itself remains as compelling as ever. Watching St Kilda dismantle Essendon is a reminder that form and momentum are real, powerful forces in this competition.

But the custodians of the game have responsibilities beyond the scoreboard, and the umpire contact rulings feel, to this old Carlton supporter at least, like a missed opportunity to draw a line in firmer ink. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the fines will prove deterrent enough and we won’t see anything like the Suns-Pies incident again this season. I genuinely hope so.

Final Word: Don’t Lose the Things That Matter

The VFL — yes, I know — was built on a set of unwritten rules as much as written ones. Respect the umpire. Shake hands after the game. Play hard but play fair. Some of those things have evolved naturally and that’s fine, football should evolve. But some of them are worth holding onto precisely because they define what makes this game worth watching at all.

Port Adelaide and St Kilda both gave us reasons to watch this weekend. Let’s hope the people running the show give the umpires reasons to keep running out there every week, safe in the knowledge that the competition they serve has their backs. As far as I can see, this particular ruling didn’t quite manage that. But the kettle’s boiled, and I’ll try to stay optimistic.