Cade Lucas
With umpires and referees in short supply across many sporting codes, Cade Lucas took a closer look at what is turning people off officiating matches.
Like many migrant families who arrive in Melbourne looking to meet new people and make friends, the Lush family were recommended to give the local religion of Aussie rules football a try.
“My daughter and son started doing it and then after a month or so my wife started and then maybe a couple of weeks to a month later, I got in and started doing it,” said Wayne Lush of how his family became hooked on the sport after relocating from New Zealand at the beginning of last year.
“It started last year and then by the end of last season we were all doing it.“
This rapid conversion of rugby mad Kiwi’s to Australia’s Indigenous code is even more remarkable considering Wayne, wife Jacinda and children Chaise and Ezabella don’t actually play footy.
They umpire it.
All four Lush family members are boundary umpires in the Western Region Football League, the result of a Facebook post asking for recommendations on nearby sports clubs and activities.
“They’re fantastic for us,“ said WRFL umpiring director Steve Keating of the Lush family before adding this telling observation:
“We’d love to have more of them.”
While grateful for the unexpected boost, Keating knows it doesn’t change the reality that he has less whistle-blowers than he needs.
“It’s not getting worse but still at a critical stage, “ Keating said.
“We haven’t reached critical mass to fill all our games,” said Keating of the shortage which is particularly prevalent among field umpires, resulting in many reserves games being officiated by club volunteers.
A minor consolation for the WRFL is that it is hardly Robinson Crusoe in this regard. The entire sport is affected, with the AFL reporting a shortage of 5000 umpires nationwide and outgoing chief executive Gil McLachlan admitting the issue had ‘gotten away from us.’
And while AFL’s popularity in Victoria and the sheer number of umpires it requires for each game (anywhere from six to 10 depending on level) makes it the most notable example, finding people to officiate any sport has become a problem whether they’re called umpires, referees or whatever else.
“Numbers were around 500 which was leaving a lot of games without a referee, ”said Football Victoria’s referring director Tony Peart of the situation he inherited when he took on the role two years ago.
Numbers have since doubled to more than 1200, with Peart hopeful of reaching 2000 in the near future.
While a vast improvement, it’s still well short of the ideal amount for the state’s largest participation sport.
“We’d like it to be around the 5000 figure, that’s the dream figure,” Peart said.
Proving cold weather isn’t the reason, cricket is also affected.
Mercantile Cricket Association Umpires president Paul Grant said the shortage had increased the burden on existing umpires.
‘Some older umpires are finding it challenging to double up on Saturday and Sunday,” said Grant, who also umpires Aussie Rules.
The reasons are many and varied and as Keating points out, aren’t new.
“It’s always been a challenge attracting senior field umpires, ” he said of a role where the reward for a good performance is being ignored, but a bad one can bring torrents of abuse and worse.
As with most issues in 2023 though, the spectre of COVID-19 looms large.
Grant said the flow on effects of border closures were still being felt in cricket umpiring.
“We rely on international students and while they’re filtering back, there’s still not as many as before,” said Grant of students from the Indian subcontinent whose passion for cricket leads them to officiate it as well as play.
He said a broader problem though was the way the pandemic had altered people’s interests and outlook..
“The overriding issue is people have moved on post-COVID.
People have just thought ‘I’ve had enough of umpiring, I’m onto something else.“
“I think we lead busier lives as wel,l” added Steve Keating, pointing to issues of work life-balance that saw people walk away from umpiring pre-pandemic but which have been exacerbated since.
For Peart, the post-COVID environment had exacerbated the other long-time scourges of umpires and referees: abuse and even violence.
“That’s what the overall global studies show, ” said Peart of what refereeing bodies overseas had found and what is considered a societal problem not just a sporting one.
Recent months have seen a number of ugly incidents involving umpires and referees make the news, with last month’s assault on a football referee in Sydney that left him with a broken jaw and the perpetrator remanded in custody, the nadir.
While concerning, Peart said the problem wasn’t so much the isolated incidents of violence, but the long-term build up of abuse and disrespect.
“If someone does six games a weekend and in every one of those games the players have a go at the ref, are they going to wanna come back the next weekend?” he said.
Football Victoria is trying to counteract this by investing in welfare and support for referees, including an app where they can rate their interactions with both teams and identify those more likely to cause problems.
“It (the app) allows us to target the problem and work positively with the club,” Peart said.
Keating said while violence and misbehaviour makes it hard to retain umpires, on odd occasions it can aid recruitment too.
He said after recently witnessing an assault on a player in a reserves game, an ex-footballer contacted the WRFL and has since become an umpire.
“Through all the chaos, we got a recruit out of that,” Keating said.
As for long-term solutions, all point to something that in the short-term has been considered a problem: the rise of women’s sport.
While the extra fixtures have stretched resources even further, women’s sport also presents a huge source of new umpires and referees for both female and male sport.
Keating said 50 female women umpires had joined the WRFL, while for Football Victoria, the upcoming FiFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand presents an unprecedented recruiting tool, with two Victorians Kate Jacewicz and Joanna Charaktis among those officiating.
It’s a chance Peart is determined not to miss.
“We’re looking forward to building on their legacy.”
To become a football referee visit: www.footballvictoria.com.au/resources/referees/become-a-referee
To become a WRFL umpire visit:www.wrfl.com.au/umpires/
To become a cricket umpire with the Mercantile Cricket Association go to: www.mca.asn.au/content.aspx?file=2%7C10094v
