While most football leagues around the country struggle at this time of year to attract umpires, the same cannot be said for the Sunraysia umpiring fraternity.
Umpires started pre-season training this week and Sunraysia Football Umpires Association president Tony Finn said he had been delighted by the interest shown in the first week.
“We had over 20 people here the other day, which was fantastic, so we’re looking forward to a positive year,” Finn said.
“As far as pre-season goes, this seems to be a very healthy pre-
season,” he said.
“There’s just a general interest and a general keenness for people to get themselves to a certain level that they can then do the job well.”
Finn added that if the trend continues in a positive manner, the association could be looking at double the number of umpires compared to last season.
New Sunraysia Football League president Trevor Heaft said the increase in numbers boded well for the upcoming Sunraysia and Millewa seasons, which will kick-off on Good Friday with the Irymple and South Mildura clash at
Henshilwood Oval.
“If the umpires are healthy then the league is healthy, it just means there’s less of an onus that falls back onto the clubs,” Heaft said.
“In previous years sometimes we have struggled, particularly during school holidays for under 18s and reserves, so hopefully that will abate this year,” he said.
Heaft said the strength on the league depended on the strength of the umpires association, referring to the board as the “ninth club of the league”.
With a number of junior umpires coming through the ranks, Heaft said there was some encouraging signs for the umpiring fraternity in the coming years.
“The league is only as strong as its weakest link,” he said.
“That’s the issue at this stage – we’ve got to start looking at the future, we’ve got to solve the problem initially but we’ve also got to have something in plan for further years,” he said.
With the football season only nine weeks away, Finn added it was crucial the board continued to recruit umpires to add depth to the association to ensure every game, including reserves and under 18s, had umpires across the 18-round season.
“We’re also trying really hard to maintain numbers in the Millewa league so that the whole area is serviced as well as we can with our umpires,” he said.
Finn said it would also be beneficial to the association if ex-footballers could join for the 2012 season to help guide the junior umpires into the senior games.
“We would love to have ex-footballers come along who have now decided that footy is past them, that they could contribute to their local footy community,”
he said.
“We would like to think that it could really happen this year, it would be fantastic if it did happen,” Finn said.
Finn said there was a number of benefits to being an umpire.
“The thing with umpiring that people don’t realise that are outside of it, is that it’s a really close-knit group of people,” he said
“We have a lot of incentive there financially, socially, fitness-wise, but also you’re giving back to your community and that’s such an important part at the moment in an area like this.”
For those interested in becoming an umpire, contact Tony Finn on 0418 145 330.
This article appeared in Saturday's Sunraysia Daily 4-2-2012.
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