When anyone spends any length of time out of the game they love and are so passionate about because they are injured they can become dispirited and disillusioned. The game they have worked so hard to be a part of can seem so far away. Negative thoughts about am I good enough, can I overcome this injury invade your everyday life, whereas when you are upbeat and getting selected each week these thoughts never enter your head.
If you sit back and review the umpiring career of Chris Kamolins who umpired his 150th AFL game on Friday night between Hawthorn and Collingwood it has worked in the opposite direction to what the current thinking is.
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 scoreboard cameras had focused on him, it was Shane’s moment in the sun where the broader footballing public could recognise a great feat, even grudgingly, by an umpire. There was barely a ripple of applause or even a derisive comment from a frustrated supporter sitting nearby.
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, faster and further than anyone else who takes the field in any footy game but only get noticed when the commentators focus on a short throw-in rather than the ruckmen standing 50 metres away from them.
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 150 senior games of experience. Five years ago it wasn’t kick, mark, play on as much as it is today. You had to learn how to manage players too.” reflected Andrew on the eve of his 50th AFL game.
We all know about Jordan’s footy career with Essendon and Carlton but it is his resurgence to get to 50 games as an umpire that has pleased him the most. “I was dying to get back,” reflected Jordan last week. “When my family came to terms with how to best support Ricky following his accident and things settled down I realised just how much I missed being involved.”
Brett Rosebury will become the first West Australian born umpire to reach 300 AFL games this coming weekend in the North Melbourne v. Geelong match on Saturday. Brett becomes the 18th field umpire in VFL/AFL history to reach the milestone. It is a milestone that only the very best achieve. In fact only two of the 18 to achieve the mark have not umpired a VFL/AFL grand final. He is the youngest man to debut as an AFL field umpire, aged 20, in the game’s history.
Ask Rob Taylor what his best or most enjoyable game was and he fires right back without any ego “I haven’t had it yet!” Rob goes on to say, “there were plenty of times in my short career when I didn’t think I’d make it to 50.”
Who was the last 21 year old with fifty games of AFL experience under his belt? Chris Simms maybe? Not sure really. One thing I do know is that this quietly spoken university student is passionate about a few things and one is certainly his footy.