Carn the umpires!

IT’S a staggered start to the local football season with the Gippsland League and the Ellinbank League having a full round of matches, only one West Gippsland League game and Mid Gippsland not kicking off until Saturday, April 22.

It’s probably because schools don’t go back for Term 2 until Monday, April 24, so good on them for looking after their kids and their families.

But it’s an exciting time of the year for country communities with everyone back around their clubs enjoying the fun and fitness, and the rest of the great benefits of belonging to a club and chasing shared goals.

Good luck to everyone for a great season and good on all those business that support the local football and netball clubs, they deserve your support.

But we’re giving our biggest shout out to the men and women who put their hands up to umpire our football and netball games, many of them paid but still a significant number volunteering to help their clubs and their teams.

The complexity added to the rules, especially the football, some of it in response to protecting the head and other rules trying to make it a fairer contest, have made it much more challenging for the umpires and we need to be backing off on our criticism of the men and women in white across the board.

Fortunately in South Gippsland, we enjoy the services of one of the best football umpiring panels around, certainly the best in Gippsland anyway, and we love the way they go about it.

Some leagues are trialling a ‘white card’ initiative to try to stop, especially club officials, from criticising the umpires but that seems to be adding another level of complexity to what the umpires have to do. We don’t need that here.

But what we do need is a positive attitude to the role umpires play in our great games. If you must add in an “oh, come on umpire” every now and then, be prepared to give equal measure to “good decision ump”!

Now on with season 2023 and good luck to everyone.