Daniel Wells or Brent Harvey are likely to be next his targets and it’s resulted in a call from North premiership player Wayne Schwass for the Roos to get on the front foot.
''The first thing I would do is ring Wayne Campbell and the umpiring department. I would have picked out a number of examples that I saw involving Brent Macaffer and Trent Cotchin at the weekend to get clarification to understand what is permittable and what is not permittable,'' he told The Age’s Jon Pierik.
''I think the subtlety of that is to flag with the umpiring department we would want for whoever Brent goes to, to be paid pretty close attention.''
Cotchin claimed Macaffer had ''got away with a lot'' while umpires' coach Hayden Kennedy said he did not like the way Cotchin was regularly impeded. AFL operations chief Mark Evans also weighed into the argument.
''The role of the tagger in the last five or six years now seems to be coming back to a much more hard tag and it’s difficult for an umpire to be in a perfect position for every moment of the game to see some of those tactics,'' he said.
''As a general rule, we like to see our stars have a free run at the game but we also appreciate there is a role for a lockdown player, but they must do that within the bounds of the rules.
''I have no doubt across the weekend you’ll find players had negating tactics that should have been picked up, and I am not just talking about that game [Richmond and Collingwood], or that pairing [Cotchin and Macaffer], and the challenge for umpiring is to how do they make sure they are in the best position to see all those things.
''The communication system they [umpires] use on match-day, they usually point out key match-ups to watch. But sometimes it’s easier around the ball - it’s very difficult to pick up sometimes 50, 60, 70 metres away. That’s the challenge for our umpires - how they work through that.''
Schwass was more direct when suggesting how the Kangaroos should handle the Macaffer situation.
''I have a fairly strong view in how they should handle taggers. That is, and the thing that frustrated me on Friday night, I didn’t see a Richmond player go and help out his team-mate,'' he said.
''I saw nobody try to get in the way of Brent Macaffer, block him, bump him within the rules of the game. I can only recall one cheap possession that a teammate gave to him.
''Geelong made a habit out of getting Gary Ablett into the game early by cheap possessions and looking after him. Irrespective of who Brent Macaffer goes to, the Kangaroos, the 21 other players, have to make it a part of whatever they do through the course of the match, to give protection and bring a Boomer Harvey or Daniel Wells into the game as quickly as possible because if you don’t do that, that certainly makes Brent Macaffer’s job a hell of a lot easier.''
