The poor old AFL umpires were in the spotlight last weekend.

They have copped it on social media (predictable) and from mainstream media (unusual).

I am far from being an umpire lover, but instead of joining in the frenzy, I almost feel sorry for them.

AFL umpires have the hardest job in world sport.

The rules of our game are ambiguous and change frequently.

Although the umpiring department will tell you they never change a rule during the season, they do frequently change ‘interpretations’. 

Plus they tend to focus on various rules each week.

This week’s rule of the round was holding in marking contests.

If you are a player and don’t watch Friday night football to see how the game is umpired this week, you aren’t a professional.

I know this frustrates the hell out of players (and supporters), I can only imagine how frustrating it is to the men who have to pay the decisions.

As I said, I almost feel sorry for them.

The clamp down on ‘niggle frees’ is a classic example.

I have been in this game for 40 years and never heard of something called the ‘cumulative effect’, whereby a free will be given after multiple low-level contacts, bumps or pushes in a row.

How many pushes are too many?

The AFL won’t give us the number, such as four, because that would give a player licence to push three times without infringing.

You could call it ambiguity by design. But surely ambiguity in any sporting rule is undesirable.

Personally I think the game was better umpired in the late 1980s and 1990s.

This isn’t because the umps were necessarily better, it’s because there were far fewer rules to adjudicate.

Watch a game from 1995 and you’ll sit there saying that’s a free kick, there’s a free kick.

But it wasn’t, and the game was easier to understand.

Sure, many of the new rules brought in have made the game safer, but far too many have been introduced just because people were given the opportunity to meddle. An opportunity they took with gusto.

They have a misguided notion that the rules are there to determine the aesthetics of the game.

Whenever somebody at HQ gets a bug bear about an aspect of game they make a rule to counter it.

To be honest, the rules introduced in 2019 haven’t added to the game.

What they give you in one hand they take away in the other.

The 6-6-6 formation gives you an open centre square at the expense of 12 players parked inside 50. Faster kick-ins get the ball moving, but decrease scoring from defensive turnovers.

I guarantee no umpire likes blowing their whistle and paying a free kick because a player was not inside the goalsquare at a centre bounce.

Or because a player touched a ruckman without first telling the umpire he was going to do so.

These are inconsequential actions that do not affect the game, yet the subsequent free kick can have a enormous bearing on the outcome of the game.

The ongoing debate is whether umpires should be full-time professionals. Personally, this is a dumb idea.

When people have more time on their hands the tendency is to constantly tinker and change things.

Changing things is what frustrates football followers the most. Case in point, niggle frees and rules of the week.

The AFL needs to adopt the theory that perfection is when there is nothing left to take out, not when there is nothing left to add.

If you need inspiration, watch a game from 1995.