Walters puts himself about so much, and is so slight, that it is often hard to tell how much of his forward momentum is self-afflicted and how much is him genuinely being rag-dolled. It makes him very difficult to umpire. To my eye it looked on a few occasions that he went to ground a little too easily yesterday, and the umps overcorrected by not giving him the benefit of the doubt.
There has been talk on other posts about umpires paying more free kicks to free up the game a little. Other than for high tackles (re: Selwood), I don’t think the AFL looks after the bloke who gets his hands to the ball first enough. As Shane said once, the ‘reward the tackle’ lobby is too strong. To me, if you are tackling it means the starting position is that you’ve been out-pointed by your man. By not paying marginal pushes in the back in the tackle, and pinging blokes for holding the ball without prior opportunity, the rewards have swung too far in favour of the bloke tackling. I think Walters got a bit frustrated yesterday that he kept getting his hands on the ball, his bloke was marginally pushing him in the back, and he didn’t get the calls.
At one point in the last quarter he got called for holding the ball with no prior and after a blatant push in the back. A few minutes later he got reported. I don’t think those things are unrelated.
