So, Adam Schneider, that's what you get for being a smart-arse. That's what you get for clapping derisively in an umpire's face - not once, but twice. What you end up getting is your right whack.

St Kilda fans are still fuming over the non-payment of a free kick to Schneider in the dying minutes of yesterday's game against North Melbourne, which they lost by five points. And, on the surface of it, they have good reason to be mightily pissed off.

Their little left-foot goalsneak was only 20-odd metres goal when he was lassooed, put in a headlock and ridden into the ground by Andrew Swallow as if he was some runaway steer at the rodeo. The only thing Swallow didn't do was truss up Schneider's four legs and leave him hog-tied on his back.

Umpire Todd Keating, rather than respond to the crowd's roar for a Schneider free kick, bent low like a ballerina then stretched his arms out wide in his best Swan Lake imitation and said: ‘Holding the ball; that's against you, No.13?. He might have had a smile on his face at the time, it was difficult to tell.

When Schneider reacted furiously, Keating began backpedalling and waved the Saint towards him, indicating a 50-metre penalty. So a simple Saints' set-shot at goal had, in the blink of an eye, been transformed into a Kangaroos ball on the wing.

Schneider was immediately dragged from the ground by coach Ross Lyon.

But there is an important context to that Keating decision which needs to be explained. A quarter earlier, with the Saints kicking to the Coventry End, Schneider was sprinting for the ball half a metre ahead of his opponent Brady Rawlings near the 50-metre arc when he went to ground. Convinced he should have received a free, Schneider got up and, arms outstretched, pleaded his case with the umpire. When play was waved on, Schneider walked towards the man in white and, from about 10 metres, put his hands above his head and began clapping sarcastically. It was a cheap ploy to ridicule the umpire, and play up to the Saints-dominated crowd.

A short time later, when his teammate David Armitage was paid a free kick in the forward 50, Schneider felt the need to again approach the officiating ump and again clap demonstratively in his direction. It was a childish, petulant display that was only designed to mock.

At the three-quarter time break, the field umpires - Keating, Matt Stevic and Stefan Grun - gathered together near the centre circle, had a breather and perhaps got around to discussing the antics of the little Saints forward pocket. We can probably make the assumption they weren't amused.

North Melbourne's former premiership coach Denis Pagan often counselled his players never to backchat or wind up the umpires. He said it would only come back to haunt them. "You'll never get the 50-50 decisions," he used to say. Or even, as it proved in Schneider's case, the 80-20 decisions.

Yes, the umps got the Schneider ruling wrong - undoubtedly - but they're human. We know every one of their decisions should be made without fear or favour, prejudice or passion. That's their charter.

Yet that's not how it always pans out. James Hird, Robert Harvey and Adam Goodes win Brownlow Medals; Leigh Matthews, Ted Whitten and Wayne Carey don't. Often, when it comes to line-ball decisions, umpires reward the fair-minded and reasonable and punish the sledgers and the surly.

We saw it again at Etihad Stadium yesterday: nobody likes to be pilloried for doing their job, especially publicly and especially in front of 35,000-odd people.

So the umps had their revenge and, as always, it was a dish best served cold.

As they walked away from the ground on Sunday evening, Saints supporters were apoplectic about the umpiring. But if it's scapegoats they want, perhaps they should look a bit closer to home.