With most of the week gone and last weekend's events just about faded to black, I'm still feeling my justice-nerve twitching over the fate of goal umpire, Daniel Wilson. If you've forgotten, he's the supposedly vision-impaired official who adjudged that Geelong's Shannon Byrnes had crossed the score-line before getting his boot to the ball last Saturday night when, according to what you hear, Byrnes was roughly ten metres from goal when he put boot on Sherrin.

A howler of the first order by a total incompetent, denounced the armchair experts. A fundamental goal umpiring error said AFL Director of Umpiring, Jeff Gieschen, in quickly announcing Wilson would be dropped for this weekend's round.

Gieschen was fire-fighting three obvious errors from last weekend's two most prominent games and he delivered the critics that for which they clamoured: Wilson's head on a platter. It is the usual justice by opinion poll. No wonder the federal election is proving so unsatisfying. We tell them what we want, they wriggle around feeding us as much of it as they feel is manageable then they expect us to respect them for it. Or at least elect them. Such is modern life.

On asking questions about standards applied to umpires in earlier times, I'm assured Wilson would have been skewered in previous decades, too. Umpires are expected to get it right. Well, goal umpires anyway. Er, some of them. Quite clearly, field umpires have made mistakes in virtually every game played since 1858, but their lot is at least recognised as being more interpretational. For all the odium they cop, they are given some leeway.

For the poor old goalies, it's black and white. Never mind that cricket umpires wouldn't be dropped for one close run out call given in error. It's understood by their masters that with a man, or a bat, moving at high speed towards a line, it can be hard to make a split-second adjudication. When you only get one shot at it and it happens in real time, not slow-motion with endless replays, it's not easy.

Unfortunately, television is an all-too-powerful influence on perception. Slow something down and show it often enough, and black-and-white clarity is so powerful that the real life circumstance becomes lost. This is partly why there is so little respect for umpires and referees in sport around the world. They are made to look so flawed by the ever-increasing power of technology that the public can't tolerate their fallibility.

This leads to television technology being brought to the adjudication of elite sport. Instead of being an observer, carrying - in a detached way - the picture of an event to its audience, television has become a player in the game. It's not always done by design. There are instances of TV producers and executives, such as Network Ten's David Barham in the past week, resisting the rush to video adjudication. But it's a losing battle.

And there's more to it. If Wilson was dropped this week, why weren't Adam Wojcik and Chelsea Roffey? They also made mistakes. Gieschen said all three goal umpires were "in fantastic position" but they just got it wrong. He implied that there were extenuating circumstances in the two incidents from the Friday night game in which the goalies erred. Wilson's mistake, though, was a "fundamental goal umpiring error" according to the umpires' boss.

I'd have thought they were all fundamental goal umpiring errors. Wojcik didn't see Jarrad Waite's foot touch the ball. Roffey didn't see Jay Neagle's kick sail between the big sticks. Pretty fundamental stuff.

No, Wilson's error was no more fundamental. It was just more glaringly apparent through the eye of the television camera. That made it less forgivable. He actually did as umpires are instructed to do if there is any doubt in their mind about a decision relating to a score: he gave the lesser result. Yet he won't be officiating this weekend.

The sacked goal umpire is the victim of expediency and, alas, such expediency is so common these days that it is accepted with barely a murmur.