The umps started the game impartially, just calling the frees as they saw them, by qtr time we had 11 to the hawks 1, somebody obviously got in their ear at qtr time because the hawks didn’t stop infringing the freo players but the free kicks stopped being paid. This seemed to embolden the hawks players who got worse, as the game started to get out of hand with spot fires all over the ground, the umps responded by paying frees against freo players for standing up for themselves, like the one against Brayshaw. The whole thing was a mess. If it wasn’t for the freo coaches telling our players to ignore their tactics and get on with playing the game, it could have turned very ugly with an all in brawl.
Sometimes the umps need to ignore the count and just keep paying the obvious frees as they see them.
