The inquisitors on ABC radio’s Sunday Inquisition declared the Carlton comeback was too wonderfully entertaining to analyse- too mysterious. NO, NO, NO!!! Not from my couch it wasn’t. Not from the neighbour’s either – judging by the slammed door.
The analysis is easy. Five umpiring decisions in the last 10 minutes or so opened the door for Carlton and they snuck in like thieves in the night.
Without just one of:
- the missed high tackle to Shuey close to goals,
- the touch and go and unfair 50 metres to Tuohy,
- the two momentum reversing and barely-there high contact decisions against Natanui as he was about to surge forward,
- and the more or less arbitrary call of “not 15 metres” for Selwood’s “ mark” inside the 50m
and the Eagles more than likely win- if only by a few points. Look, of course umpires are only just one small part of a game; I think they do a great job – all things considered. Yet, their decisions can shift the momentum of games. They are like very big butterflies flapping their wings and occasionally they can start hurricanes.
In this case, a blue storm blew up out of the doldrums. Carlton were gone- they needed a divine wind to get over the line and the umpires unwittingly did the bidding of some cruel football god.
In other words, it was just bad luck for the Eagles and good luck for Carlton. But the result didn’t reflect the way the two teams played. Carlton are being undeservedly praised and the Eagle’s effort is underappreciated.
I know. That’s life, that’s sport, but it can be hard to take sometimes.
More power to you Brother Mark. “We wuz robbed” is the great cry of footy fans everywhere. Hope for the hopeless.
I will join you on the TV Newsreader Drug Dealer wing of Stockbroker Stadium next weekend as we take to the Purple Scum with baseball bats.