Mark Duffield - The Editorial (24.06.2026)

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**Mark Duffield** (0:56)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the SENWA Radio Studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium. On this Wednesday morning in Perth, we're here thanks to Beaumont Homes. Award-winning design, built to be loved forever. It's going to be sunny in Perth today, a top of 21 degrees. Made in WA for WA, this is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA. So the AFL has moved to stop criticism of its umpires, telling club CEOs at their conference on the Gold Coast that while it might have let Gold Coast coach Damian Hardwick off with a fine for his critique of, or without a fine, sorry, for his critique of the umps in the game against Geelong at GMHBA Stadium recently, and while North Melbourne's Jai Simpkin might have been warned and excused for his social media rant about Paul Curtis' three match ban for the dangerous tackle on Eagle Hamish Davis, the next offender up is going to get pinged. This, of course, is typical of the AFL. It has had rules in place to punish the likes of Hardwick and Simpkin all along. It even fined Nasir Wangadeen Miller for her half-hearted bird flipped at an abusive fan last weekend.
But why the AFL didn't fine Hardwick as anyone's guess when it comes to questioning officialdom, this was a long way from his first rodeo and he's admitted himself he's not a good loser. But there is an underlying issue here, and a robust conversation, which has been simmering all year, has now broken out about the standard of umpiring currently on offer in the AFL. So our respected colleague Jared Waitley lit a fire under this on Monday when he publicly doubted that the AFL had enough umpires with the professional competence to umpire at AFL level to maintain its four umpire system at the moment. Now we all respect Jared and his command of the English language and his usually balanced takes on the game, but the words professional competence, I have to say, concern me. They wreaked the disrespect towards umpires who have the toughest job in footy. On this show yesterday, former umpire Dean Margetts echoed some of Jared's concerns about the umpiring standard. But he also hinted that if we return to a three umpire system, which is what Jared was calling for, a number of the game's oldest, most respected and best umpires would be forced out of the game because athletically they would not cope with the extra physical demands of the AFL game in a three ump system. For example, two of the game's best, Brett Roseberry and Matt Stevick, are both 46 years old. Now, former ump Ray Chamberlain estimated in a robust but respectful debate with Jared on Fox Footy's AFL 360 last night, that eight of the game's top 12 umps would retire if the game returned to a three umpire system. Now, the two decisions that have become the poster children for the standard of umpiring at the moment came in the GWS Carlton game at the weekend. So, Jadon Laverde executed a spoil on blue Frank the Tank Evans, the ball ricocheted to Finn Callahan, and the umpire signaled a mark to Callahan. Now, what I suspect happened is that the ump was on the verge of either paying the mark to Evans before the spoil, or on the verge of paying interference to Evans from Laverde, and then decided it was play on and messed up his whistle blowing and his signaling. It perhaps should have been a free to Evans, but if it wasn't, the actual outcome wasn't changed by the mess up. Callahan simply played on. Then there was Callahan's attempted tackle on Patty Cripps. Cripps went to ground after fending off. The tackle didn't stick, but Callahan got a holding the ball free anyway. It's a clear error.