Geelong Advertiser |
SPEAK to some local footy clubs about yellow cards and they will tell you the punishment is too harsh.
One GFL club has even called for them to be scrapped.
The main concern is about the imbalance that exists when players can be sent from the field for 15 minutes without replacement for incidents not deemed worthy of a report.
“It can impact the game, and it may cost someone a place in the next round of the finals over something very minor,” outgoing Lara coach Matt Kershaw said.
Bell Park has come up with a possible solution. The Dragons don’t believe yellow cards are needed in top-ranking local football leagues and have taken their case to AFL Barwon.
Keep the red cards for clear and obvious reports, they say, but scrap the yellow cards and enforce free kicks and 50m penalties — and report if necessary — for the lesser stuff.
At least that way if it turns out there was nothing in the incident, it hasn’t impacted the game by leaving a team a man short.
“For a player to be sent off the ground, it has to be a really reportable offence that they should be outed for,” Bell Park co-coach Tim Sheringham said.
“Whereas if you take the yellow cards out, the incident that might be a yellow card under the current system is just a report, a free kick and away you go.”
Kershaw is also advocating change and believes if yellow cards remain, the player sent off should at least be able to be replaced. That way the offending player can cool off, but their team is not disadvantaged.
Still, he thinks yellow cards are overused.
“If there’s a push-and-shove situation where both players are having a little tussle but there’s nothing worthy of a report, then why yellow card them? It makes no sense,” Kershaw said.
“Umpires can pay a free kick, 50m penalty, all those sorts of things, it doesn’t need to be an automatic send off for a minor indiscretion.”
Sheringham said his club’s stance was not a dig at umpires, rather a push to have the rules they enforce under AFL Victoria guidelines changed.
“Obviously there’s the incidents that have ended up at the tribunal after a yellow card and nothing happens (no suspension) and the clubs are looking back and thinking, ‘where have those 15 minutes without the player gone?’ ” he said. “It might be at an important stage of the game.
“We’re the last club that wants to sound like we’re sooking. We’re not. This is not having a go at the umpires, they have a tough job, they’re just applying the rules.”
Soccer-style carding, where a yellow card indicates a warning and a second warrants a send off, has also been floated by clubs.
Geelong umpires boss Scott McLeod said he coached his umpires to “act on instinct” when determining reportable offences and issuing yellow cards.
“If you don’t make a report, then sometimes the game can get out of control — the most powerful thing to do is take a stand,” McLeod said
While AFL Victoria rules have provisions for players to be sent from the field without report, his preference is that all yellow cards are accompanied by a report.
Umpires are refreshed on the send-off rules before finals, but he stressed it was no different to any time during the season, given high standards were always demanded.
St Albans was left one man down against Colac in Round 17 after Ruben Vesikuru was incorrectly yellow carded for making incidental contact with an umpire. No report was laid.
“I know I’ve ran into umpires this season at least three or four times but never got yellow carded,” outgoing St Albans coach Clinton Proctor said. “There just needs to be consistency.”
Proctor believes a yellow-carded player should be able to be replaced, saying his side was forced to work overtime to cover for a missing player who should not have been sent from the ground in the first place.