Gieschen acknowledged on Monday that three mistakes were made over the weekend, with Carlton’s Jarrad Waite, Essendon’s Jay Neagle and Geelong’s Shannon Byrnes all denied goals by wrong decisions.
“On each occasion the umpire was in a fantastic position, but on each occasion unfortunately they made the wrong call,” Gieschen said.
The umpires involved in the Waite and Neagle decisions - Adam Wojcik and Chelsea Roffey - will adjudicate at matches again this weekend.
But Daniel Wilson, who missed the Byrnes goal, will be an emergency umpire in round 20.
“The Byrnes one was a fundamental goal-umpiring error and I guess that’s the one we’re most disappointed with,” Gieschen explained.
“The concentration dropped and we expect that to be got and it wasn’t adjudicated accurately.
“The two out of the Essendon game … they were tough calls.
“The two umpires involved have had outstanding years and … they will be penalised in terms of their assessments, their points.
“That’ll go against their assessment at the end of their year, come finals time, when the rankings are decided.”
Despite the below-par weekend, Gieschen does not believe goal-umpiring methods need to be overhauled.
“I look back to last year when we only had three [errors] for the entire year, including the Hawkins [kick hitting the goal post] one in the grand final.
“Up until the half-way mark of this season, we’d only had two.”
Gieschen is confident improved communication, rather than the introduction of more goal umpires, is the answer.
“I think we have a number of measures in place to be more accurate,” Gieschen said, pointing to the fact goal umpires are allowed to consult both the boundary and field umpires before making a decision.
“Obviously in these three decisions there was a lot of doubt over all of them and we felt that had the umpires had a deep breath, thought about it a bit more and gone to the consultation process, we might have come up with a different result.
“If we had one goal umpire on each post in the Neagle case that may have helped.
“But certainly with the Waite kick and the Byrnes kick, a goal umpire on each post wouldn’t have helped because the umpires were in perfect position.”
However, Gieschen has admitted that the use of video technology could play a role in making umpiring more accurate.
“Had technology been up and about, and if it was quick and could show us the right angles, certainly that would’ve assisted us on the weekend,” he said.
