The AFL says its umpires made the correct decision not to award Richmond a 50-metre penalty after the final siren in the Tigers’ 106-100 loss to the Swans.
Friday night’s match was met with controversy after Dion Prestia and the Tigers didn’t receive a 50-metre penalty when Swans midfielder Chad Warner booted the ball away when a whistle for a free kick and the final siren was simultaneous.
That decision meant Prestia was forced to take a near-impossible shot from 65 metres out, close to the boundary line, rather than 15 metres out and within range.
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While it’s common for match officials to pay 50-metre penalties for similar infringements, umpire John Howarth explained that it wouldn’t have been fair to charge Warner extra considering he didn’t hear the whistle for a free kick.
“He couldn’t have heard, common sense, OK?” Howarth said to the Tigers.
On Saturday afternoon, the AFL released a statement backing the decision.
“The AFL confirms the decision late in last night’s match to not pay a 50m penalty was correct,” the league said in a statement.
“The free kick to Richmond player Prestia was correctly paid (by the non controlling umpire in the centre of the ground) and almost immediately after the free kick was paid, the siren sounded.
“The umpires then made the correct call in not applying a 50m penalty against Swans player Warner, given the immediacy of the free being paid, the siren sounding and the ball being kicked into the crowd.
“It is the same discretion often used around the ground when umpires don’t believe a player has heard the whistle and kicks the ball.”
Immediately after the match, Richmond coach Damien Hardwick was asked about the moment, but chose to point the finger at his own side letting a five-goal lead slip away,
“It’s irrelevant. You can look at that last incident, but the fact of the matter is we were up by 30 (33) points, it’s easy to look at the last game, but we should have iced the game,” Hardwick said.
“Seventy-five per cent of the time I thought we were pretty good, 25 per cent lapse – especially in the third quarter – there were some things we thought we could have done a bit better.
But on Saturday morning, Hardwick took to Twitter, appearing to poke fun at the umpire’s “common sense” reasoning for not awarding a 50-metre penalty.
“Common sense, Sorry, what?” Hardwick tweeted.
https://twitter.com/hardwick_damien/status/1530325923744317440
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