THE AFL concedes its umpires were a little trigger-happy when awarding marks during Friday night's Richmond-Carlton game.

One of the most obvious cases came in the third term, when a fumbled mark was paid to Richmond forward Ty Vickery.

On Tuesday, AFL umpires coach Hayden Kennedy admitted the officiating umpire blew the whistle too early.

"Obviously with Vickery, there were a couple of marks where we went too early," Kennedy told AFL.com.au.

"But once again, I'll reiterate whatever the guys see, if they think it's a free kick, they'll just blow the whistle."

However, Kennedy conceded a mark should have been paid to Carlton ruckman Matthew Kreuzer in the third term. 

The Blues big man took a grab over the top of Nick Vlastuin in Carlton's attacking 50, but the Tiger was awarded the mark instead.

Kennedy said umpire Troy Pannell was in the correct position but just made a mistake.

"Matty takes a clean grab of it first, he controls it," Kennedy said.

"Nick brings the ball down with him but I think from the vision on the night, it needed to be a paid mark to Matthew Kreuzer.

"In two hours of footy, we make incorrect decisions at times, and this is just one of them. It seems as though our umpire was in pretty good position but just read it wrong."

There was also a huge discrepancy in the free kick counts between Thursday night's Port Adelaide-Collingwood game and the clash between Richmond and Carlton.

Just 17 free kicks were paid at Adelaide Oval on Thursday, while 57 were awarded at the MCG the following night. 

Kennedy said he had no problem with standard of umpiring across the weekend and rejected suggestions the umpires were directed to pay more free kicks on Friday night after a low number in the previous game.

"We can only umpire what's in front of us," Kennedy said.

"There was a lot of chatter this week in the difference in the numbers. But if you have a look at those 57 free kicks, there's not many of them that are actually incorrect.

"It's just a different style of game. We can go from one game in Cairns where there's 12 ball-ups, and I go to Brisbane the next day and there's 39 ball-ups and free kick numbers are quite similar, so it's just a different style of game."