Greg Swann press conference, ARC and umpiring issues, stand rule, video, latest news

AFL executive general manager of football performance Greg Swann has made an immediate rule backflip after conceding two ARC errors were made on Sunday.

Amid backlash from pundits and the wider football public about ongoing ARC and umpiring frustrations, Swann fronted media outside AFL House on Monday afternoon.

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Furore erupted particularly after two glaring incidents on Sunday, the first of which coming in the St Kilda-West Coast game when a Rowan Marshall goalline mark wasn’t reviewed and called as such until a minute and a half of subsequent play had occurred.

It scrapped that minute and a half of play, in a bizarre call that frustrated Fox Footy’s broadcast panel at the time.

On Monday, Swann said that while the eventual call was correct, the process took too long.

“It was 55 seconds (after the original mark), so it just took way too long, (and it) stopped the game mid-game,” Swann said.

He also revealed that the ARC would no longer have the power to stop play once the ball goes back into play. The goal umpire has to call for a review at the time, otherwise there won’t be one.

“The ARC will still do goal reviews … but they won’t intervene in a score like they did on the weekend, unless the goal umpire asks for a score review,” Swann said.

Probed on his reasoning for the change, he added: “There’s a balance between getting it right and affecting the fabric, or the flow, of the game.

“We brought rules in at the start of the year to make it easier to umpire and to keep the game moving, and we felt that example yesterday took way too long — frustrated the fans, probably frustrated those watching.”

The other contentious incident from Sunday came in Canberra, late in the tight Giants-Kangaroos clash, in which it was adjudged that Griffin Logue didn’t get a hand to Xavier O’Halloran’s goal-bound kick at the 14-minute mark in the fourth quarter.

Despite Logue’s adamance that he did touch the ball, there was no formal review conducted despite replays appearing to show the Roos defender’s fingers make contact with the footy.

And on Monday, Swann admitted the incorrect call was made.

“In this case, they both felt that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to turn that over, so they went back and said that was an ‘umpire’s call’,” Swann said.

“We’ve had another review of that today — you can see that it was touched, so that one was incorrect.”

Swann, though, went to bat for the state of umpiring overall, saying: “If you take away the ARC issues, most of the feedback we’ve had from clubs is that the umpiring has been as good as it’s been for a long time.”

Swann, who’s nine months into his role at league headquarters, also shared that changes to father-son and academy bidding were imminent.

The tweaks to this year’s proceedings are set to impact Port Adelaide and Carlton in particular, which are set to match rival bids on projected top-five draft prospects Dougie Cochrane (Power NGA) and Cody Walker (Blues father-son), while Essendon-tied Koby Bewick is set to be a big 2027 draft prize.

It’s expected that, starting this year, clubs wishing to match bids on top father-son or academy-tied players will only be allowed to use two first-round picks accumulating to the requisite Draft Value Index points.

“That announcement is soon,” Swann said. “I might be back out here again in another couple of days or early next week, but it’s not far away.”

The frustration from clubland with regards to that key change is that teams would have liked more runway to plan ahead, considering the change is set to come less than seven months before November’s national draft.

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