A blaring car horn has caused a Ballarat Football League senior match to finish with more than five minutes left on the clock on Saturday.
The central umpire at East Point's away clash against Melton South at the Melton Recreation Reserve signalled the end of the match at the 19-and-a-half minute mark of the final term after mistaking the car horn for the final siren.
The error, which was not corrected by the official time keeper, happened as Panthers full forward Rob McMahon was about to have a shot at goal with the home team trailing by 25 points.
Melton South co-coach Troy Scoble said he could see the lighter side of the error when told of it, but admitted he thought about comparisons with Richmond coach Terry Wallace and his Fremantle counterpart Mark Harvey, whose teams were beaten in matches where the final siren blew early due to time-keeping errors.
He conceded the Red Lion Kangaroos were worthy winners of the match despite the mistake.
"I got told about it five minutes after the game. I must admit, when playing the quarter seemed a bit short," Scoble said.
"It was pretty good game of footy. I guess (if the match had played out for the full, correct, length) they could have blown it out more but we might have come back too.
"East Point was winning at the time, which is just as well I suppose. But imagine it if we were us winning rather than the visiting team at the time? That would have been very interesting."
RegionalOne BFL operations manager Aaron Nunn said it was the time keeper's responsibility to alert the field umpire of the error so that the match could continue for the correct period.
He said the umpire would have been able to continue the match despite wrongly signalling its end.
"The time keeper should have come out and told (the umpires) the game was still going on," Nunn explained.
"The umpire could then just bounce the ball where the play had finished and continue from there.
"It's just common sense really."
Ballarat Courier
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