AFL football boss Greg Swann says the league will no longer call back the ball once play has restarted as part of the score review process after West Coast were on the wrong end of a controversial call from the ARC against St Kilda.
At a snap press conference on Monday, Swann said the decision to pay Saints ruckman Rowan Marshall a mark on the goal line during their clash with the Eagles was correct, but the process had taken “way too long”.
After the goal umpire determined Marshall had not controlled the ball before crossing the line in the second term of the game and did not call for a review, a behind was paid and the game re-started.
But nearly a minute later, the ARC intervened and told the umpires to take the ball back to St Kilda’s 50-metre arc, where Marshall duly snapped a goal in his side’s eventual 101-point thrashing.
Earlier on Monday, Eagles chief executive Don Pyke called on the AFL to clarify how the score review system worked.
“I was surprised that it came back, because you go through the scenarios — what if we’d taken it down the other end and kicked a goal? Does it (make) that goal null and void?” Pyke said.
“How do we keep the game flowing, allow the umpires to do their job, and accept the game’s a very dynamic game, but it’s always had some controversy around umpiring decisions?
“Are we trying to remove all that? Because if we are, we expose ourselves to either slowing the game down or stuff like yesterday, where everyone’s like ‘what’s going on here, we’re rewinding the clock 60 seconds’ for something that has now proven to be an error.
“What’s the statute of limitations on bringing the ball back? Because the game had gone on — I think we were just about to get a free kick down inside our 50, and all of a sudden, we’re back on the goal line.”
More to come
