A frustrated Luke Beveridge has launched a scathing critique of the “total confusion” around tackling adjudication, calling for urgent “correction” at a time when he and fellow coaches have never “felt as helpless” when guiding their players how to tackle.
While speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Western Bulldogs coach Beveridge was asked if he and his players were clear around what they can and can’t do in contests similar to the one that saw Tiger Rhyan Mansell suspended for three games for rough conduct against St Kilda’s Liam O’Connell.
But Beveridge, who’s in his 11th season as Bulldogs coach, quickly pivoted his attention to his grievances around inconsistency with the ‘holding the ball’ rule.
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“It’s another that’s difficult to touch, isn’t it? I don’t want to be too controversial today,” Beveridge told reporters when asked about the Mansell incident.
“I think the main one that we’re all focusing on, moving away from that, is there’s just too much uncertainty across the league in regards to source-pressure situations with tackling and being tackled.
“No one understands the rule anymore and it’s very difficult to coach it. How long you can hang onto the ball? Can you attempt to dispose of it, throw it out, miss it completely? Is it play on? No one understands it.”
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The AFL midway through last season tweaked the interpretation of the holding the ball rule, directing umpires to give players less “reasonable time” to dispose of the footy.
Beveridge, the Bulldogs’ 2016 premiership coach, said he’d personally repeated his concerns around ‘prior opportunity’ with AFL officials recently.
“The suggestion from me was to make sure we bring back prior opportunity and validate incorrect disposal,” he said. “Because when you think back to why it went this way, it was the concussion risk with sling tackles and holding on too long, blow the whistle earlier – but we’ve gone from that to just total confusion.
“Unfortunately, we need a correction. It needs to come from ‘City Hall’ and through the umpires – because the umpires are just finding it too hard. They don’t know how to adjudicate it, and our players don’t know what the decision’s going to be.
“I don’t think we as coaches have ever felt as helpless around that and coaching it than now.”
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