Round 22 – Shorts

Shane McInerney heralded in his 400th game on Saturday with a panel of significant experience.  Between the nine officiating umpires there was a total of 1873 games of AFL football including 131 finals and 19 g...

Shane McInerney joins the greats

The ground announcer's voice boomed across the MCG on Saturday night as the umpires entered the arena ".........and congratulations to field umpire Shane McInerney on umpiring his 400th AFL game."  The scoreboa...

A wily veteran lands 200 AFL games

Run your eye down the list of boundary umpires that front up week after week, do their job and go home you'd struggle to name most of them.  They are the unheralded men of footy.  They have to run harder, faste...

Long apprenticeship pays off

Field umpire Andrew Mitchell (Mitch) walked onto Blundstone Arena on Saturday quietly confident that he could handle whatever the game threw at him.  "I had an eight year apprenticeship in the VFL with almost 1...

Umpire Shaun Ryan is back with a bounce

Shaun Ryan has not thumped a football into the turf since the last quarter of the 2011 grand final, and his back feels all the better for it. Please click here to view the full article from The Age newspaper...

Round 21 – Shorts

The comebacks continued from VFL to AFL this week.  Simon Meredith and Chris Kamolins were back from long term injury and illness.  Both of these experienced umpires bolstered the ranks and brought a level of e...

Open door coaching for older legends

The AFL Umpiring Department in collaboration with the AFL Umpires Association opened its training and coaching doors on Wednesday afternoon and evening to our retired umpires who wanted to see if things were do...