There’s growing uncertainty over the AFL’s review system, and it soured an already frustrating night for the Blues in their second-half fightback attempt.
Adelaide ran out 28-point winners on Thursday night, but frustration reigned over a couple of umpiring calls — including an insufficient intent decision paid against Nick Haynes that saw a two-time premiership Roo demand to know what other option the Carlton star had.
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And then late in the match, Adelaide’s Nick Murray was able to walk the ball across the goal line – at a time when the Blues could have closed to within just 12 points with five minutes still to play.
“I think we’ve still got a problem with the interpretation of the boundary line and the goal line,” Fox Footy’s David King said.
“Why you can run your ball across and give away a rushed behind, and you can have the smallest of errors from (Nick) Haynes on the boundary between the arcs and it’s a free kick?
“I think it’s a poorer look for our game if you can rush a score.
“I’ll ask you, what do you want (Haynes) to do in that position?”
“It’s a free kick if he lets it go!”
“Yeah. Can he try and knock the ball straight back in?” journalist Jon Ralph replied.
“Then he knocks it back to his opponent from Adelaide. So that’s what the AFL would say, don’t kick the ball to the boundary, don’t try to just ease the ball out. It’s almost impossible for Nick Haynes there. That’s the challenge.
“It has incentivised some corridor play … but I can understand your frustration and Nick’s frustration there.”
As Fox Footy’s experts agreed the Haynes call was “too strict”, King said the demanding new rules could cost players their spots.
“(Haynes’) momentum takes him over the ground – unless he throws it back to the opposition player, I don’t know what you expect the bloke to do,” Jason Dunstall said.
“You get delisted if you throw that back in,” King added.
“The coaches wouldn’t have that. Just giving too much of a free run.
“I think that’s just over-officiation.”
The Blues’ frustration wasn’t quelled in the third term when a blatant throw from Adelaide’s Josh Rachele was missed deep in defence late in the third term – at a time where Carlton had the ball locked in their half and would have narrowed the gap to just 18 points.
Instead, the throw went undetected and moments later, Adelaide’s Alex Neal-Bullen won the shot on goal after getting an out-of-bounds review through the ARC.
The umpire’s mic picked up Neal-Bullen pleading to “challenge” the initial call to throw the ball in.
And the subsequent review found the Crow successfully handballed the footy into the lower leg of opponent Ollie Florent. He then nailed the resulting snap on goal.
“I’d be irate if I were a Carlton supporter. After the throw down the other end – irate!!” triple premiership Tiger Jack Riewoldt said on Fox Footy.
“Why are they looking at that one and not the one down the other end, where there’s a complete throw?”
Replays showed Rachele threw a cut-out rugby pass to a teammate that was missed by umpires in the driving rain.
“That annoys me there – you get the ARC to go and look at the things on the sideline,” Riewoldt said.
“You see a flat-out throw from Josh Rachele that gets missed – you can sense why there’s frustration around it.
“In a critical part of the ground as well (the Rachele throw).
“That’s a shot on goal!
“A missed opportunity for Carlton.”
Riewoldt called for the ARC system to only be used in the final minutes of matches – rather than throughout the night for boundary infringements.
“We’re seeing more and more interventions … the issue here, as Jack Riewoldt put it so well, is that Josh Rachele blatant throw which could have resulted in the Carlton goal, wasn’t overruled,” Ralph said.
“So we’re not seeing any umpiring decision overruled – we’re only seeing them on the boundary line. We’re seeing some goal-line decisions reviewed after the fact. It’s a challenge there.
“That one in isolation was right – but as Alex Neal-Bullen said, we want some real consistency here.
“Maybe we’re not seeing that.”
Carlton coach Michael Voss touched on the 23-28 free kick count in his post-match press conference, but felt Blues big man Harry McKay “could have been rewarded more” in the wet conditions.
“I thought Harry competed really hard — sometimes against three players! Could have been a little bit luckier tonight maybe in some contests,” he said.
“I think he could have been rewarded a little bit more.
“I’ll go back to make sure I’m not making any accusations there.”
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