Ruck is a waste of time
DUAL All-australian David King says the AFL must consider scrapping a recently introduced rule in the wake of vision of some boundary umpires waiting 18 seconds for two rucks to nominate.
The AFL, ahead of the 2017 season, introduced a rule where one player from each team had to nominate for a ruck contest, usually by putting their hand up.
It was brought in to outlaw the third man up and help ease congestion at stoppages.
On Fox Footy’s First Crack on Sunday night, King pointed out how long it was taking umpires to restart play some times as they waited for nominating rucks to get to stoppages.
King highlighted two boundary throw-ins from two matches involving Geelong and hybrid ruck Mark Blicavs.
After a ball went out of bounds at the half-forward flank against the Crows in round 11, the boundary umpire waited for Adelaide ruckman Reilly O’brien to jog from inside the 50m arc to the stoppage to compete with Blicavs.
The Geelong player had been in position for the ruck contest for nearly 10 seconds.
“They’ve got to do something about this, the AFL,” King said on First Crack.
“Look how long the umpires are allowing him (O’brien) to come back and then be a ruckman against Blicavs.
“This irks me a bit, because Chris Scott’s taking the risk of playing an undersized running ruckman, so don’t give time to correct like this.”
King then pointed to a passage of play from Geelong’s win over Melbourne in which he noticed an adjustment.
As the Dees moved the ball inside 50 during Thursday night’s game, Blicavs jogged from the flank to inside the arc while Max Gawn, at one stage, was seen walking from the wing into the centre square.
The umpire then called for a ball-up, with Blicavs and Gawn nominating for the ruck – even though Gawn was still close to 50m away.
But the umpire appeared to waste little time waiting for Gawn to arrive, with Blicavs having an advantage for the stoppage in his team’s defensive 50.
“I reckon the umpires have been spoken to by the Cats. They’ve said: ‘ Throw it up, get the ball going, don’t wait for him and if he’s not there, let’s go’,” King said.
“This is incredibly quick. Max can’t get there. So I reckon the umpires in Geelong games do it quicker than others.”
King then highlighted vision of a stoppage inside the Magpies’ forward 50 from Saturday’s Collingwood-north Melbourne game.
A boundary umpire waited for about 18 seconds for Todd Goldstein to run from the Roos’ full-forward position to compete at the boundary throw-in ruck contest.
“He (Goldstein) puts his hand up to take it while he’s on the wing – and the umpire let him get there. That is complete rubbish,” King said.
“They’ve got to fix this. You can’t have ruckmen coming from full-forward to take a boundary throw-in at the other goalsquare end.”