‘Confusing situation’: AFL concedes error in last minute mayhem

AFL football boss Laura Kane has conceded there was an umpire error but defended the crucial last-minute decision not to hand North Melbourne’s Bailey Scott a 50m penalty in the agonising one-point loss to Collingwood.

Kane said the non-decision, which denied the Kangaroos a shot on goal from about 30m out to win the game at Marvel Stadium, was correct, but the umpire should have called “play on” when Scott first took the mark and “took four steps” back in to play.

The Kangaroos defender intercepted a soccer-kick from Collingwood star Nick Daicos with 41 seconds remaining but took steps off his mark into the middle of the ground without being called to play on.

He was immediately set upon by Collingwood’s Beau McCreery and Steele Sidebottom in an apparent infringement over the mark, but Kane said the umpire had been right to resolve the confusion without paying a 50m penalty.

“It was a confusing situation and I understand why people are confused and left wanting to understand what happened,” Kane said on the AFL website.

“You can see on the vision, Bailey Scott takes the mark, the umpire blows his whistle and one of two calls could be made. It could be play on immediately, or it could be stand, which would indicate the mark had been paid.

“Neither of these two calls were made in the immediate moment after the free kick has been blown, and Bailey takes four steps or so inbound and looks to play on. So the correct call should have been play on initially.”

Kane supported the umpire’s bid to “regain control” of the passage of play without paying the 50m penalty.

“The initial call, the initial mistake, was that play on wasn’t called. It should have been called play on. So Collingwood players (were) anticipating that they were going to hear a call post-whistle. A really common discussion around players is play the whistle and when you hear it, wait for what’s next,” she said.

“We are focusing on the time between the whistle and the communication and making sure the umpires understand that the initial call should have been play on, given he took four steps or so inbound and every objective marker of play on was there.”

Kane said she was “happy with the process” of an earlier score review in which Scott claimed to have touched a shot at goal from Collingwood’s Jack Crisp, which was eventually called a goal.

“We need certainty in the ARC and our score reviewers need to see and be certain that the vision shows very clearly that the ball was touched, and we didn’t have that certainty,” she said.

“It’s a line ball call in the moment. Our score reviewers have to make a decision with what they have available to them, which is the vision and the images that they had. In an absence of being completely certain, they went with the umpire’s call.

“We’re happy with the process. I understand how you could get to either outcome, but their job is to make a decision and they’ve made one to back in the umpire because they didn’t have definitive vision or a definitive image to make that call.”