The Melbourne Vixens and Collingwood Magpies result should be reviewed and declared a draw after Sunday’s horrendous centre pass blunder.
The Vixens won that Melbourne derby purely because they had two centre passes in a row late in the contest – and scored from both of them before taking a one-goal win.
While the match is under review, Netball Australia has stated the result will stand – but I think that’s what needs to be reviewed.
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The result standing is not fair, it’s pretty blatantly not fair.
And I think the fairest thing to do is to make the result a draw.
Collingwood coach Nicole Richardson labelled the ordeal a “fiasco” after she tried to alert umpires to the error in the final quarter.
“We’ve been completely robbed,” Richardson added.
“You cannot have a result like that. This is an elite level of competition, you’ve got an automated scoreboard that tells you whose centre pass it is. You’ve got a bench who knows exactly whose centre pass it is, but the bench do not have any power to do anything about it.”
Vixens stun Magpies in WILD finish! | 01:11
Nicole Richardson has every right to be extremely angry with the way that all played out.
This is her livelihood. She is the head coach of this side.
For all we know she’s got KPIs in her contract. If they don’t make finals off the back of not getting points from a match they led the majority of, that’s someone’s livelihood.
It’s a big deal. There’s a lot at stake here.
It’s got to be sorted out because it can’t keep happening.
I honestly don’t know if the umpires involved just didn’t understand why Nicole Richardson wanted to call a time out.
Maybe they thought she just wanted to call a tactical time out when she tried to alert them to the double centre pass and they knew she didn’t have one left?
We don’t have a crystal ball to see what would have happened had the Vixens not gained the centre pass advantage, but I completely understand Nicole Richardson’s anger and I honestly do feel like that game should be reviewed again.
There’s an automatic centre pass counter on the big scoreboard in the stadium.
The scoring bench know exactly whose centre pass it is – why is this type of error happening in the modern game?
This is obviously horrendous to happen in our sport.
But if we’re looking for a silver lining, every big change comes from something like this happening.
If nothing else, I hope this has been a big learning curve and a lesson learnt and this puts in place a procedure so it never happens again.
Unfortunately it’s the Magpies on the end of it.
