The last of our State League grand finals are held this weekend in our three traditional football heartlands. It doesn’t matter whether you are the most credentialed, you have to be the best performed to enjoy the thrill of participating in the biggest games in each of those competitions.
In the SANFL, field umpires Craig Fleer, Leigh Haussen and Toby Medlin, boundary umpires, Tim Bryant and Sean Burton and goal umpire Peter Challen all have AFL experience. The most experienced is emergency goal umpire Steve Murphy who has 262 SANFL games and 74 AFL games to his credit. We also congratulate the following umpires who have also made the SANFL grand final, Andrew Crosby (emergency field umpire), Corey Watkins and Martin Elsgood (boundary) and Thomas Sharpe (goal)
In the VFL only field umpire Tristan Burgess has previous AFL experience. The other grand final umpires are Daniel Butcher and Hayden Gavine (field), Lachlan Rayner, Patrick Dineen, Ben MacDonald and Nick Laurence (boundary). Matthew Dervan and Simon Plumberidge (goal)
Over in the WAFL evergreen pair Stuart Parry and Scott McPhee continue to dominate their grand finals, along with Matt Adams in for his 3rd in three years. All three have been on the AFL list.
We congratulate Josh Garrett, Ryan Kukura, Kyle Sinclair, Sean Moylan (boundary) and Sam Hunter, Sally Bound (goal) on their appointments.
Our best wishes to all umpires who step out on the weekend to represent their competitions around Australia.