Western Football League umpires were given a training session they will never forget, with some of the AFL’s best umpires coming down to training.
Part of the AFL community umpire round, the Western league was involved in a number of different activities to help promote umpiring.
AFL umpires Matt Stevic, Ian Burrows, Josh Mather and Anthony Laughton attended umpiring training along with a number of umpires from the Victorian Football League program.
More than 150 local umpires were involved in a question and answer after the training sessions.
Western football director of umpiring Lachlan Harty said it was nice to have the umpires in the spotlight for the week and their hard work recognised.
“We get umpires every year and this year we have one of the biggest names [Stevic] running training which is pretty unreal.”
Several umpires were part of a match day experience on Thursday night at Marvel Stadium for the Essendon and North Melbourne AFL match.
For them the night included a meet and greet with the matchday umpires and walking out with the umpires pregame.
The league also had AFL umpire Nathan Williamson recently umpire an under-12s girls match with some up and coming umpires.
Former umpire Ray Chamberlain also recently umpired a match in the league, marking a few big months for the Western umpiring fraternity. Another former AFL umpire Troy Pennell is an umpires coach in the league.
“We generally don’t draw attention to umpires, but it’s nice to have the opportunity to appreciate the umpires,” Harty said.
Harty said they had slightly more umpires than last season, but were always looking for more numbers across the board.
“We still have teams what we don’t have umpires for,” he said. “We would prefer to have a full panel of umpires.
“We’re still looking until we can do that.”
Harty said they were still especially field umpires, while the league is also focused on getting more females involved.
The league’s umpires train on Tuesday and Thursday night at Hanmer Reserve from 5.30pm.
