I personally did not see a problem with Bowdens or Guerra’s actions. You cannot change the rules reactionary continually to what happens in the game. Do you change the rules to stop evolving the game or do you change the rules to keep the game evolving?? Or do you just leave them??

Thanks for your comments and input aussierulesblogs

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The Hawthorn tactic was NOT to waste time, which was the objective of the Bowden Manoeuvre. Hawthorn were looking to free up a target. It was Guerra’s aim to rush the behind to take away some pressure (even if only fleetingly in some Geelong minds) and then immediately kick in to a newly freed up target. Clever tactics.

IF we revert to the old rule, where the player licking in had to wait until the goalie had FINISHED waving the flag before kicking in, we remove the tactical advantage that the Hawks exploited.

The Bowden Manoeuvre was nothing less than wasting time, and should have been penalised in exactly the same way as:
• retarding a player after a mark; or
• kicking or punching the ball after it has gone over the boundary line. The appropriate penalty for wasting time, under the current rules, is a 50-metre penalty. The umpires either weren’t cluey enough to understand Bowden’s intention (unlikely) or not empowered to make that judgement call (highly likely under the Gieschen regime).

BTW, the deliberate out-of-bounds free against Crawford was a disgrace. Yet another example of the umpires either not understanding the game or not being empowered to make a commonsense call.

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And you are right about the ambiguity of deciding what is deliberate or not. On the Grand Final Shane Crawford kicked the football 40+ meters along the boundary and was given a free kick against him. 30+ years ago you used to be able to kick the football out on the full and it’ll only be thrown in…

The umpires have a hard enough job as it is

Thanks for your comments and opinions Wounded Tiger and Die Hard.

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Hawthorn ran an incredible risk on the weekend – effectively giving away 2 goals. If they’d lost the game by a few points, we’d all be talking about how silly they were to have rushed so many. And that’s the beauty of it – we’ve perhaps got the only game in the world where you choose to give your opposition points, for possession of the ball.

And as Die Hard says above, imagine how angry we’re going to be when the decision on just what’s deliberate goes against us in a close game.

Leave the game alone. I really like it.

Take a look at the grey line with deliberate out of bounds and the confusion and even anger these decisions can cause.

This is another knee jerk reaction … if the Hawks had only won by 8 points, would we still be saying that rushing 11 behinds was the reason they won?

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