It was a tough week all round for the umpiring group if the media was right about performances. However, spare a thought for the group when three senior umpires were missing through injury and illness. Troy Pannell and Shaun Ryan were out this week with adductor strains and Brett Rosebury was a late withdrawal with the flu.
David Harris was the beneficiary of a late call up and officiated in his 50th AFL game in Adelaide. David came onto the AFL list in 2012 from the VFL via Warrnambool. David is the third currently listed field umpire to hail from Warrnambool along with Shaun Ryan and Jason Armstrong.
Mark Thomson (313 games) just keeps churning out elite performances over in SA. He now moves to fourth on the all time list of games by a boundary umpire. Only Murray Williams (320), Herbert Kent (330) and current SA colleague Darren Wilson (386) are ahead of him.
We have to feel for Queensland based goal umpire, Tristan Symes on the weekend. As part of the AFLUD policy goal umpires are travelling out of their states to umpire at various interstate venues to assist their development. Tristan umpired the Melbourne v St.Kilda game at the ‘G’ on one of the coldest and wettest July days ever recorded here. I am reliably told it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for his first game at the home of football, but he may not have thawed out yet!