THE CHICKEN wing tackle has received plenty of exposure in light of the injury to Kangaroos' skipper Brent Harvey, but AFL umpires manager Jeff Gieschen is confident the practice isn't about to become commonplace.
Harvey will miss up to three months after dislocating his elbow in such a tackle on Saturday against Richmond, but Gieschen maintains the incident involving Daniel Jackson was an unfortunate accident.
"We haven't seen a trend to say that chicken wing tackling is coming into AFL football," Gieschen said of the practice that sees the tackler take his opponent to the ground with one arm pinned.
"What we see in AFL football these days from all players is a real desperation to tackle and sometimes that means they'll stretch and lunge with one hand or grab a player by the arm or by the shorts or what have you.
"I think coincidentally this week we saw a couple of tackles that people try and draw a bow with that they might be similar to chicken wing tackles in rugby [league], but we certainly haven't seen a trend in that area.
"If anything did crop up and we saw things happening that were bit unusual then we'd certainly look at that because our philosophy is to protect the ball player at all times and make sure the safety of the players is paramount.
“[But] we haven't seen any trend or anything at this stage to alarm us."
There have been a number of incidents this season involving umpire contact, with players subsequently fined and suspended, but Gieschen disputed the assertion of former player and current media commentator James Hird that the relationship between umpires and the players was at one of its lowest ebbs.
"James hasn't played now for over 12 months so I'm not sure he's that qualified to comment on what's happening on the ground now," he said.
"Obviously he speaks to players and they give him some feedback. But the feedback I get from umpires is, in terms of general play, in terms of general relationships and communication on the ground, it's as good as it's ever been.
"I think the thing that people look at in relation to these relationships is this umpire contact. No player wants to get suspended and no player wants to get fined for running into an umpire and often, as we know, it is just a minor brush.
"They do get fined for that and sometimes they do get suspended for that and I think that's the thing that people think has soured the relationship and it's just to do with that area of the ground [around stoppages when the umpire backs out].
"I think once everybody realises that that's an area you can't go and those penalties kick in and people understand better that there's a strong deterrent there and they've got to stop doing that I think that will settle down."
Gieschen admitted the message that a player has duty of care when an umpire is backing away from a bounce is taking a while to take hold, despite warnings from match review panel chief Andrew McKay and club briefings on the issue.
"It has been a really slow process. The light hasn't switched on overnight and players have suddenly moved away from that area," he said.
"I think it is a tactical thing. We get consistent feedback from the clubs to say they use that area as a hit-to point, they use that area for a tagged player to go to in an effort to gain separation from his opponent … we know that's a tactic there.
"We know the players don't deliberately try and run into the umpire, but while we're using it as a tactic and while we're not totally adhering to [the directive] we're going to continue to have these things.
"We trialed the no-go zone, we warn the players before we bounce 'we're coming out this way', we signal and we show and yet from time to time we still see players setting up there.
"When it happens I can understand the match review panel taking a dim view of it."
