“Our message to players is that when an umpire pays a free kick,accept it and move on and our message to umpires is we encourage you to continue to pay free kicks or 50-metre penalties where players have shown dissent,” Scott said.
“You can be surprised at a decision,but you can’t show dissent towards an umpire. You can’t question an umpire’s decision,it has been accepted in the game for far too long. Ultimately,we have let this go as an industry over a period of time and we have just got to get on with it.”
Scott said while some umpires had thicker skins than others and would tolerate things some other umpires would not this created inconsistency and all umpires would be told to take a zero tolerance approach to dissent.
“It’s not up to the umpires to make the rules it’s up to the umpires to adjudicate. It’s a challenge for some umpires who would prefer to pay less free kicks,but that is not their decision to make. They need to adjudicate the rules the way the AFL decide they should be adjudicated whether an umpire agrees with that or not is irrelevant,” Scott said.
“Our message to umpires is if there is any level of dissent to pay free kicks or 50 metre penalties ... Players can show emotion they just can’t argue with umpires. I don’t think it’s that difficult.”
Coaches reacting in the coaches’ box with surprise and anger to umpire’s decisions and being shown on the tv coverage was harder to police because “we don’t know what the coach is responding to” Scott said.
He added:“In my experience some of them are umpires (incidents),some are coaches,some are players who didn’t do the right thing. But all people in leadership positions have got a responsibility to support umpires”.
Coincidentally,Giants co-captain Toby Greene is due to return to play this week after being suspended from the final last year and the first five rounds this year for contact with an umpire after he walked from the field remonstrating with umpire Matt Stevic and then walked through him.
In a video released on the club’s social media,ill-advisedly celebrating his return with “he’s back”,Greene admits he made a mistake last year.
“What happened last year was a big stuff up,but there is lots of little things that I do and I have been working on and will continue to work on,” Greene said.
Scott said the game was still about 6000 umpires short at the community level but the trickle down effect of the crack down on dissent was being felt with more people encouraged to come back to umpiring or to take it up.
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“It’s really important that players and umpires still have a relationship during a game – and a respectful relationship both ways – and at different times,if they ask a question,in the right manner,hopefully that doesn’t get penalised.”