bizarre blunder in Saturday night\u2019s Showdown<\/a>, where Riley Thilthorpe clearly appeared but the ball was allowed to bounce back into play and from there Ben Keays was awarded a holding free kick.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, a shot at goal from Fremantle\u2019s Jye Amiss against Gold Coast appeared to go over the post but was called for a review, which umpires are no longer supposed to.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game\u2019s capacity to trip itself up at the moment is frankly below the status of the elite competition in the country,\u201d Whateley said on Monday night\u2019s program.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn one instance the goal umpire didn\u2019t go to the failsafe when it really needed to be used. In the other, when you\u2019re told you\u2019re not to go, and went anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis system has tied itself in knots, and it just routinely fails the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never believed in it, and the whole point around the stated aim was to correct the howler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt spends all of its time fossicking around in blurry vision for bent fingers while missing the howler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is ill-conceived, it fails week on week and it\u2019s no good for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fagan addresses Lions star exit rumours | 01:31<\/p>\n
Whateley also criticised the disallowed goal to Brisbane\u2019s Logan Morris against Sydney for his shot at three-quarter time.<\/p>\n
The AFL admitted Morris should\u2019ve been awarded a goal after the star forward was called to play on after he appeared to pull up short of the player on the mark. <\/p>\n
It came after the league ticked off Hawk Nick Watson\u2019s controversial disallowed goal for running off his goal line during a shot at half-time last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a problem of the game\u2019s own making, this has never been an issue,\u201d Whateley added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shot after the siren, it\u2019s the most glorious part of the game, but because we want to justify the Nick Watson decision, which should never have been justified, it should simply have been said this is not what we\u2019re after.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe added addendums to the rules, so that a grand final umpire was so confused over what he was supposed to do that a ball that pings straight over the man on the mark and goes through for a goal is waved away, and then on Friday morning the chief executive is on radio, and like John Hewston with the birthday cake and the GST, he didn\u2019t know what part of the rule applied to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat hope does it give any of us? <\/p>\n
\u201cBut specifically, what hope does it give the player when we get to a moment, and this is the most beautiful part of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cA player has a shot after the siren to win a game, and there are all of these things now in play. The umpire\u2019s a little bit unsure, the players going \u2018what am I actually allowed and supposed to do?\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cYour role is just to kick the goal and win the game, and we have muddied this completely unnecessarily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saints great and fellow AFL 360 co-host Leigh Montagna is \u201cadamant\u201d players are now missing shots after the siren because they\u2019re \u201cparanoid\u201d of stepping off their line, \u201cwhich most players do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree one hundred per cent and I\u2019m going to get the numbers,\u201d Montagna said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m adamant, and I want people to watch. I\u2019ve seen all year players having shots for goal after the siren.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost are missing because they are so paranoid about whether they take half a step off their line, which most players do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freo charge to top of Premiership Window | 02:30<\/p>\n
Appearing later on the program, Lions coach Chris Fagan was miffed by the decision in his side\u2019s 43 point win and hoped \u201cthat situation could be avoided in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Logan Morris was pretty upset post game because he felt like he\u2019d done everything right, which, as it turns out, he had,\u201d Fagan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought that at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, have we got the technology where if the umpire thinks the players stepped outside the line and can it be checked to see if he did?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if not, the goal should be awarded, or should we just be saying to the players, \u2018well, don\u2019t bother trying to kick around angles, just you\u2019re just going to line up straight in front of the man on the mark and kick over his hands\u2018?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure, but I\u2019d like to think that that situation could be avoided in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, can you imagine what we would have been like after the game if we had lost by a couple of points?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s movement between Essendon and James Hird. Plus the ARC has been savaged for \u201croutinely failing the game\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-768725","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\/768725","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=768725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n