Whistling up a storm

The umps are copping some lumps lately, but they’re only human, aren’t they? Terry Brown investigates.

The umps could be in a spot of bother?

They run their little legs off, and blow the pea out of the whistle, but still they just can’t seem to do anything right!

Everyone is picking on them, just for being dreadfully bad at umpiring.

It is too easy to forget that umps are genetically identical to humans, like mimes and clowns. Some have families! Some might have feelings?

Last week through a breathtaking brainsnap, an umpire put the Adelaide Crows’ season in the bin. Ballarat brothels are mighty thankful Port’s still in.

But it would be churlish to dwell on that one glitch, when there are so many others?

And, besides, it is terribly poor form to criticise an umpire, however inept. They are trying their feeble best. They’re just part-timers. Don’t let the $120k fool you.

Every week a couple games come down to a kick. 

There’s never been a more exciting time for umpires. It is their time to shine. Their whistles twitch and their minds go blank.

Some time in the next month, an umpire will blow it badly and cost a team a final or a flag. Never. In. Doubt.

To be fair – not that they are – umpires are on a hiding to nothing, albeit at $1000 an hour of match time. No one notices a good ump.

It is pointed out after every howler, usually by journos with AFL passes around their necks, that players make awful mistakes too.

With some angry 95kg meat hammer bearing down on you, that can happen.

But the umps only have to jog, look and blow the goddamn whistle, surely. If you sneer at one, that’s a big 50 metre penalty for your insolence. More like 60.

They are not actually elite at any skill. No one even bothers drug testing them.

But manners says you don’t bag the umps, however much they deserve it, because it will stop kids wanting to become umpires.

It’s raining on their young dreams, yeah? Please, spare me.

Apart from narcissism and the ability to jog backwards, there are few set requirements for umpiring.

In parks around the nation, children only consider umpiring careers when they’re sick of being smashed into hamburger Saturday mornings. Too short, too slow, no nous, no ticker, no skills, but there’s always umpiring!

Bitter old bald blokes do it for the beer money and revenge on the game that buggered up their knees.

Umpires get cash, not concussed. They don’t do it to make friends. From under-10s they get a bodyguard. You literally can’t talk to them if you even wanted to.

To cheer them up, the AFL holds an umpire appreciation round where fans appreciate the irony of being expected to cheer those flogs, just funning!

If they really want us to love the umps, there’s a bit of bad blood to deal with first. 

I’d back a sorry-style ceremony, where they apologise for missing the block on Maynard in 2018, and Rocca’s goal and Harmes’ tap-in from three rows back.

We’d love them more if they just got it right.

But umpires are only human. Remember?

Of course they melt when Charlie Curnow gives them that grin. They loved him five free kicks worth against Collingwood. They’ve loved him into a Coleman Medal. The Adelaide umps didn’t love Tex quite enough!

But it is hard to embrace their tender, human foibles when they break your brain every week!

Maybe we all forget little things, like where the boundary line is when Jeremy Cameron’s playing and where Jack Ginnivan’s neck begins?

And the goal ump who plucked those crows forgot cameras were invented in 1816. Easily done.

He should have got a replay so we could squint at the blur. I think Gil films the score review on his old work phone from the members bar.

On the up side, it was Adelaide robbed. If it was Carlton, Gil would be in the High Court now, or missing! Credit where it’s due. Job, ump!

Now, it’s not easy for umpires, but that’s like a lot of occupations.

They’re a bit like police. They mostly bring you misery. You don’t have to like them. You just can’t swear at them.

They cop less grief, though, than your average nurse, teacher or Centrelink receptionist on half the dosh. It’s only for a third of a day each week too, with six months holidays. You suspect they’d jog anyway.

The sweet job is admittedly made harder by the league.

If a cheesy half-time k-pop band demands 90 hi-res cameras and 10,000 drones, Gil will be down to Dick Smith in a blink. Working goal cameras, however, can get stuffed. 

The umps should strike, seriously. I’d take Razor Ray round a casserole and help him spell his picket line sign.

But the one way, really, to get a better standard of umpiring, is to throw stupid dollars at it.

Right now it’s a weekend job, more a hobby really, for junior footy failures, do-gooders and the power-crazed.

Why on earth would we expect elite umpiring?

The way to get more and better umps is to overpay them like we do the players. Throw some chum in the talent pool? Get it competitive. 

Forget the love of the game and the fanboy stuff. 

Make umpiring a thing you do for big money, and get fired if you cock up. Have ambitious reserve umps breathing down their necks. Survivor – Jolimont!

Or they could just pick people who can identify and process a 10cm chalk line on a lawn, I don’t know!

At least the league said sorry, not sorry. To err is human, and such. 

And only Adelaide’s screwed, so no real harm has been done.

The AFL have acted swiftly to protect the integrity of the finals.

Because the current 11-or-so umpires isn’t enough, the league will reportedly put another super score review ump upstairs.

They will squint at the blurs, only really quickly, then scream out the window NOOOOOO! 

If that doesn’t work they will signal the sniper on light tower three to plant a tranquilliser dart in some excited ump’s neck, I wish.

They’d miss, anyway.

Human error.