{"id":701619,"date":"2026-05-29T06:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701619\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T06:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:23:10","slug":"afl-puts-nick-watson-controversy-to-bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701619\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL puts Nick Watson controversy to bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AFL<\/a> has defended field umpire Brent Wallace disallowing Nick Watson’s goal after the half-time siren on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

The decision to call play on as Nick Watson<\/a> deviated off his line drew the ire of many across the footballing landscape.<\/p>\n

“The umpire, positioned directly behind the kick, correctly disallowed the score after Nick Watson<\/a> moved off his line to the right and didn’t kick the ball over the man on the mark,” a statement, released on Friday afternoon, read.<\/p>\n

“The AFL<\/a> have contacted Hawthorn and St Kilda today to provide an explanation regarding the decision.”<\/p>\n

Broadcast angles appeared to show a very minimal deviation, if any at all, prompting criticism that the incident had been over officiated. But a fan sitting behind the Watson kick released vision on social media on Friday which showed he clearly veered to the right of the man on the mark.<\/p>\n

The decision had no bearing on the outcome of the contest, with Hawthorn leading by 50 points at half-time and cruising to a 52-point victory.<\/p>\n

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell<\/a> expressed frustration about the decision post game.<\/p>\n

“We’ll certainly be going to the\u00a0AFL<\/a>\u00a0to ask about it. It makes sense to me that that is a rule on the other side of the ground. As a right footer, there is absolutely no reason that a player would go wider to give themselves an advantage, and that’s what the rule is there for,” Mitchell said post-match.<\/p>\n

“And it makes sense, but the vision doesn’t look like he goes off his line much, but that’s the umpire’s call, and I can accept that. But the fact that you can go off the line towards the boundary and it be called play on … there’s no common sense about that.<\/p>\n

“So, I would hope that we get an answer from the\u00a0AFL<\/a>, and I’m sure we will. They’ve been very good at giving us answers and giving us adjustments; they’ve done that really well. When something doesn’t make sense, they fix it pretty quickly. So, why would he run wider to give himself a harder shot and get called a play on?. Didn’t make a lot of sense, I’m glad it was in a game where individual tiny scores didn’t matter, but I hope that’s something they rectify.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AFL has defended field umpire Brent Wallace disallowing Nick Watson’s goal after the half-time siren on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-701619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}