News

“Better late than never” certainly applies to Chris Delany who was recently appointed to the AFL Boundary Squad in Queensland.

Congratulations to goal umpire Adam Wojcik and boundary umpire Michael Saunders on reaching the magical 200 game milestone on the weekend.  Ironically both umpired their first grand finals together in 2013.

SIX PROMISING female field umpires have been picked for a national academy established to fast-track their development.

My next “where are they now” is a boundary umpire who was not happy in applying 110% into everything that he took on, stating that “if it’s not worth doing well then don’t take the bloody thing on in the first place”.

It’s one thing for those of us who are part of the umpiring fraternity to know some backstories involving our colleagues, but it is another thing all together for little things to come to light that we didn’t otherwise know.

‘Good things come to those that wait’ is the old saying and nothing could be more true in the case of Daniel Hoskin who officiated his 100th AFL game having been on the list for 10 years.

Not many umpiring careers have started as a result of high school detention but there is one umpire amongst us, who because his teacher didn’t know what to do with him, made him goal umpire a year 10 game, and the rest is history.

Not since the introduction of fines for umpire contact 10 years ago have we seen the number of players fined for umpire contact than we saw on the weekend.  The AFL Match Review Officer, Michael Christian has fined 5 players from the weekend’s round and 6 in the past two weeks.  This follows a letter sent to all clubs at the beginning of April alerting them to the increasing level of contact.   Leigh Fisher must have thought he was back playing when he was struck by two players.  Dustin Martin was fined for making contact with Curtis Deboy.  Curtis would weigh 62 kgs ringing wet, no one in their right mind would get in Dusty’s way surely!  Is this a sign of the times given the increase in defensive strategies clubs are running or was it just luck (so to speak)?