FREMANTLE is awaiting an explanation from the AFL over a controversial time lapse in the dying stages of Friday night's match.

In the final 30 seconds, when one point separated Fremantle and Geelong, nine seconds disappeared from the countdown clock. The timekeepers failed to stop the clock after umpires changed the location of a mark to be paid, and the player to take it.

Fremantle football manager Robert Shaw told The Sunday Age yesterday the club was expecting an explanation from the AFL about what went wrong.

"There is a timekeeping error, it's plain and simple," he said. "The wrong decision was made; it probably gave us less time to get the ball into the goal square, which, hypothetically, could have affected the outcome of the game."

Shaw said AFL was a game of errors — "players make errors, umpires make errors, it's a game of decision-making, so that's the way it goes" — and it was now up to the AFL to decide what it wanted to do about it.

"In a multi-million dollar organisation, we can't afford to make these mistakes given the nature of the competition; particularly in the timing of a game and when a game finishes," he said.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said timekeepers were told that as soon as a signal was made, such as out-of-bounds or a score registered, they were to stop the clock until play restarted.

He said in this case, the confusion came about through the following sequence of events:

■ The ball was kicked out of bounds — the clock stopped;

■ Fremantle's Ryan Murphy picked up the ball about 75 metres from goal and kicked it — the clock was restarted;

■ After consulting with the boundary umpire, the umpire in the forward zone said the mark should instead be about 55 metres from goal, with Fremantle's Byron Schammer kicking instead;

■ The umpire stopped play and delivered the ball to Schammer — the clock continued to run.

The seconds were lost while the umpire brought the ball to Schammer, whose kick was marked by Geelong's Harry Taylor just as the siren went.

"If it was not a legitimate kick, the clock should have stopped, but we ran down seven or eight seconds we should not have run down," Keane told radio SEN. "It is not something they do deliberately, it was an error."

After the match, Dockers coach Mark Harvey said he was angry about areas of the game and would await the AFL's response.

Cats coach Mark Thompson said he knew what was happening with the clock.

"I would be lying if I said no because we have a countdown clock there," he said. "I wasn't about to run out and tell the umpire."

Geelong captain Tom Harley faces a nervous wait to find out if he will play against the Brisbane Lions next week. He sat out the final quarter of Friday's match with a buttock injury and will be assessed on Tuesday.

Fremantle will examine Antoni Grover and Roger Hayden after they received corked thighs. Steven Dodd (knee) will also be under the medical microscope.