” There’s nothing better than a good, blind referee.” – Bobby Heenan
I’ve done it, I’ve solved the problem! Sure I’m probably not the first person to think of this, probably because it’s so simple a 3rd grader could have thought of it. What have I solved? The siren issue in AFL Football of course!
Last night during the 2014 Round 17 clash between the Adelaide Crows and Hawthorn Hawks, it happened again, the umpires screwed up the end of a quarter by not knowing if the siren had gone or not.
We saw this early in the year during a Port Adelaide match at the newly renovated Adelaide Oval, with record crowds making so much noise, you could have been testing nuclear weapons next door and no-one would have heard it. When the siren sounded the umpires just didn’t hear the siren go off and play continued for a short time before anyone realised.
Umpire Ray Chamberlain wishes he had a hole he could crawl in to.
In a similar vain last night, in the dying minutes of the third quarter, the excitement was at fever pitch when Hawthorn were advancing toward their goal via the the left side wing.The crowd were going nuts, the “noise-o-metre” was being blown off it’s axis and Hawthorn’s Luke Bruest was screaming toward an impossible goal (let’s ignore the fact that he was so far out of bounds that I could have tackled him from my seat in the top tier of the Riverbank Stand and the umpire 1 metre away didn’t call it!) when, umpiring genius, Ray “Razor” Chamberlain blew his whistle and called for the end of the quarter, claiming he’d heard the siren sound via his ear piece.
The whole ground was left in a state of confusion, as it was obvious the siren hadn’t gone off. Umpire Chamberlain then decided to have a ball up, then about 2 seconds later the siren did go off, plain for all to hear. Now I’ll leave my thoughts on his comments to Hawthorn Captain, Sam Mitchell for another time.
I’ve gotta say, the solution to the siren issue is simple.
Fireworks!
Pretty sure it wouldn’t be hard to have fireworks around the stadium go off when the siren sounds?
I know there’s issues with fireworks and that some times they don’t go off on time, or may go off earlier than planned, but those issues would be few and far between. And it’s not hard to say the siren over rules fireworks and of course the umpire overalls both of those. But surely a massive visual reference would of great benefit to players, umpires and the fans?
Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
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