Well acting CEO, Dale did ring back, and me just a mere member. That's definitely a tick on the positive side of the his ledger. Spoke with me for a good 20 minutes and listened a lot.
Ive been sending messages for years about "where is the equalization that the AFL promises because it hasn't worked and all I see is rising inequality and especially where umpiring is concerned.
Every member wants to come to the ground and know that if the players play good footy, that they have a 50-50 chance.
With the likes of Deano Magotto on the scene more often than not, we don't get that. Also mentioned the sheer inequality of frees for and against compared to our feathered rivals, as Chris Scott helped us out with last year.
Dale stuck to the sorry old cliche of 'the team that's in front usually gets the most frees because of the way they are playing" and corrected me that a certain umpires wife is not on the board but does work for the Sleaze.
I reminded him that we won the Minor premiership in 2015 but got caned in the home prelim final when we were up and about and the crowd was loud. I'm sure everyone remembers the relayed free kicks from a little bit of niggle from Ballas and then Jonno and against Hawthorn as it put them back near level with us, when we were away. Or the free kick paid to Geelong before the semi final in "Geelong" and we started the game down 6 points. Or even in our GF when we were fired up and faster than Hawthorn. We were first to the ball over and over again, but got smashed when Hawks players ran in late and weren't penalised for it, except once in the last qtr when it was almost over. He did say that the Admin makes contact about umpiring concerns with AFL on a regular basis. Again good to know but do it in the open so your members can have some understanding of that. I have suggested hiring an ex umpire and they can scrutinize each game for general fairness of decisions.I don't think that's on the boards' radar though.
So he kind of deflected a lot there but when I mentioned skills he took off into the skies like an F1 fighter jet late for a sortie. Its really where his focus is and what he wants to fix. We've all watched our players kicking out of defense, a long bomb to a pack mark. Invariably all Freo players go up at the same time, don't manage to mark it, the ball goes forward (back the way it came in - and off hands) and no-one there to crumb it except an opposition player. We've been doing that since time began and it never gets addressed. So...... What The?
And then our President fired off "exactly" and you can see why we are focused on improving our skills and why we did what we did. He makes a good point , even if only 1 point. I kept trying to plant the seed of hiring an ex umpire but again he just kind of laughed. I'm hoping he has recurring dreams from here on in!
