Stevo's Sting - Why no reprimand for ump bump?

Footy is a better place with Ray "Razor" Chamberlain on whistle patrol.

As a retiring Chris Judd stressed at his farewell presser, the AFL needs personalities we can relate to as the game careers down the robot route.

But "Razor" has been cut too much slack. He should have been fined, dropped, or at least reprimanded for crashing into Kangaroo Trent Dumont.

The players have a duty of care to be aware of their surroundings. That duty must also surely extend to umpires.

You can't be darting around like a human cannonball.

No one is suggesting it was intentional, but it was definitely careless and reckless. Chamberlain made a serious mistake, which could have broken the cheekbone or jaw of a player unwittingly going about his business.

The umpires had their chance to pubicly admit Chamberlain had made a mess of it and should have been more aware of his surroundings, but instead took the pussy-foot approach.

"You can take a light hearted look at it, but the fact of the matter is, it was just an accident," Umpires coach Hayden Kennedy said on the AFL website.

"Ray's made a decision and he's tried to get in there, as we teach, as we coach, in instances that need to be attended to and Ray's gone through and it's just an unfortunate accident...Ray's not feeling well about it and we don't want that to occur," Kennedy said.

No doubt Chamberlain's feeling bad, because it wasn't intended, but the Kangaroos had every right to fire off a "please explain" letter.

And personally, I don't think Kennedy's explanation is good enough.

Dumont was rattled and affected by it for the following five minutes. Just imagine if the knock had put him out of the game.

It sends mixed messages. The players get fined for such instances and in the past even cop a far heavier penalty (remember Todd Curley?), yet the umps are fine.

What are we trying to say here? Chamberlain is a pro, who knows his way around the park and has trained tirelessly to seamlessly find a path in a fast-paced game. He made a meal of it.

Maybe fining him is too harsh, given no one's ever thought of putting the umps under the MRP umbrella, but at least the umps should have said publicly "Look, Razor's made a bad mistake and he needs to re-assess, look at the video closely, and ensure it never happens again".

Hopefully, the review of that moment of madness had much more venom behind doors.