Geelong captain Patrick Dangerfield wants centre bounce abandoned to help avoid umpire contact
Dangerfield, the former AFL Players Association president, said the centre bounce wasn't a 'valuable enough part of the game to protect' and amid an AFL crackdown on umpire contact was adamant the solution was staring the league in the face.
Gold Coast midfield bull Matt Rowell has become the poster child for club outrage at the shift from the AFL that has put suspensions possibly on the table for any player charged with umpire contact four times across two seasons.
Rowell has copped three charges this season alone, which moved Suns coach Damien Hardwick to declare the league should 'look out' if Rowell was suspended on the back of a mid-season rule change.
Essendon young gun Nate Caddy was also caught out by an umpire standing inside the Bombers' forward 50 against the Suns on Saturday that earnt a massive rebuke from coach Brad Scott, who, during his time working with the AFL, tried to get the umpires out of the way.
'We've been at them and at them and at them to move out of the corridor and the last response I had from Steve McBurney (umpires chief) was, 'Just pretend they're invisible',' Scott said.
'Well, he wasn't invisible and unfortunately it took the wind out of Nate Caddy. It took 15 minutes to get him going again.'
AFL boss Andrew Dillon said suspensions were 'unlikely' but the crackdown was warranted because players had refused to change their behaviour.
Even Dangerfield admitted to using the umpire as a 'shield' at centre bounces.
But the Cats skipper, like Hardwick, said removing the need for umpires to bounce the ball could alleviate both issues and the sooner it happened the better for the sake of players and the whistleblowers.
'Just throw it up and get out of the way. Keep it simple,' he said on Monday.
'If you talk to any umpire, a huge piece of their week is recovering from trying to bounce the ball.
'Our expectations of our umpires are enormous when it comes to not only decision making but the centre bounce and I just don't think it's a valuable enough part of the game for us to protect it constantly.'
The majority of umpire contact occurs at centre bounces and Dangerfield said removing the need to bounce the ball would allow for quicker and cleaner exits.
'I think if you threw the ball up, you get could get some decent height to it, that could go some way to getting an umpire out of the way quicker,' he told SEN.
'Because you don't have to go through that whole motion of bouncing the ball, launching it to the ground, then backing out. You can just throw it up, back out and you'd be away from the contest before you know it. And it's easier for players.'
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