I have just spent a week in the AFLUA office completing various tasks from placing and packaging orders for Asics, updating website articles to helping organise and putting together the wonderful initiative that is the Fiona McBurney match day experience. I was taken to training on Thursday night to Ikon park where the Victorian based field, boundary and goal umpires train.
Two hundred and fifty AFL games is a terrific milestone and joining the ranks is goal umpire Chris Appleton who reached this milestone when umpiring the Essendon v Adelaide game at Etihad Stadium on 23 March 2018.
Since joining the AFL panel in 2015, James has gone about his umpiring in a quiet and unassuming fashion.
Welcome to our new rookie field umpire Andrew Adair who was appointed following Alex Whetton’s promotion to the AFL list in February.
West Australian boundary umpire, Sean Moylan debuted in his first AFL game this weekend in what turned out to be a pulsating game at Optus Stadium between WCE and Geelong. Optus Stadium will become a bigger fortress than Subiaco ever was. Our umpires who have experienced it first hand in the first three rounds say that the noise is amazing.
Seventeen years on and over 707,000 kilometres of travel between Perth and Melbourne, Dean Margetts umpired his 300th AFL game at the new Optus Stadium in Perth on Saturday night in the match between Fremantle and Essendon. Both Ross Lyon and John Worsfold congratulated Dean on his outstanding achievement prior to the game. Dean’s family and closest friends enjoyed the hospitality of the new stadium at a corporate function provided by the AFLUA in conjunction with the AFL to mark the occasion. (See our video interview with Dean on the website later this week.)
The AFL Umpires Association through the Jeff Crouch Foundation donated $6,500.00 to the Royal Children’s Hospital on Good Friday.
The AFLUA recently completed a visit to meet with our interstate umpires in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Sydney. As part of the association’s engagement strategy, Peter Howe and Peter Kelly welcomed new umpires and provided a comprehensive induction overview of the association.
Eighty-eight year old Ross Raphael passed away after a brief illness. According to his life long friend, Ron Bailey, Ross who only turned 88 on Sunday was admitted to hospital four weeks ago and passed away peacefully in the early hours of Monday morning.