Boundary umpire, Adam Coote was back for his third game in 2017 on the weekend. Adam’s season has been scuttled by injury following a pre season operation. Adam now has 270 games to his name including 25 finals and 5 grand finals. Let’s hope he can finish off the year on a good note. Out of that game Chris Esler left the field at halftime with an achillies injury. The boundary umpires then had to revert to a three umpire system.
Adam’s best mate, Ian Burrows is still walking around training in his moon boot. He hopes to have that off soon so he too can look forward to getting his season underway. Ian has umpired one game this season for 249 games including 29 finals and 7 grand finals.
Interesting crowd reaction to Nick Riewoldt wanting the ball following a team mate’s mark in the last quarter. If only the Freo player watched and listened to the field umpire instead of Riewoldt he would not have given away the 50 metre penalty. Why do AFL players still lack knowledge of the rules?
Field umpire Andrew Stephens couldn’t take a trick either in the Bulldogs v WCE clash. Standing still watching a marking contest unfold, Bulldogs player Mitch Honeychurch came off second best when he collided with Stephens. Both men had their vision fixed on the contest unaware of each other’s presence. Honeychurch was attended to by a trainer. These clashes are never good but both finished out the game.
It was good to see experienced field umpires, Shaun Ryan and Scott Jeffery back in this week. Ryan was a late withdrawal last weekend ill and Jeffery is back after a lay-off over the bye rounds with a leg injury.
GWS v Geelong was the 154th draw in VFL/AFL history. It was the fifth draw Simon Meredith was involved in and the second for Ray Chamberlain. His first draw was the 2010 drawn grand final between StKilda and Collingwood. It was the first draw for all of the remaining umpires.
An inquisitive cabbie, driving one of our more experienced umpires to the airport on Saturday morning, realised he had an umpire in his cab and showed his passenger the full page photo of Shane McInerney with hands in the air among the players following the Bugg/Mills incident. Did the cabbie question Shane’s fitness?
We are looking forward to the next few weeks with some significant milestones to be recorded including 3 time grand final umpire Rob Haala’s 300th AFL game, Mark Thomson’s 350th game and Chris Roberts 200th game. They are all outstanding achievements.