Lucky umpires take the talents to the ‘G’

EIGHT talented young umpires from the South Gippsland Umpires Association (SGUA) recently graced the hallowed turf of the MCG.

Following the halftime siren, Max Carter, Tom Harris, Darren Winning, Luke Scholz, James Browne, Zhi Xia McNeil, Luke Devoison and Gemma Cook walked onto the famous ground to officiate the Auskickers in their showcase matches.

SGUA president Gary Scholz spoke on the opportunity and how his young umpiring brigade enjoyed the experience. 

“We brought a bus down about 50-60 people, it’s a really good building block for your panel as well you can use it as a social event to take all those people down and enjoy themselves and get to know each other better,” he said. 

“The ones that went onto the MCG, said it was awesome, something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives which is absolutely brilliant, plenty of photos and memories to go around.”

Scholz also explained the importance of the event for his panel, and the development of young umpires. 

“It’s something that AFL Victoria have decided to do over the last couple of years, it’s really good for us it definitely helps with recruitment of younger umpires, gives them something to aspire to,” he said. 

“This year we actually sent down a few boundary umpires as well that we able to do the grid games out in the middle, in the field, its more about being able to control the kids, so we sent a couple of young girls to do the games as well.”

He also gave an insight into the recruitment numbers of young umpires in the region as well as female umpires.

“For us it’s been really good, we’re one of few panels in the state that have been able to expand and grow our numbers which is sad in one way because it shows how bad things are across the state for umpiring in general,” he said. 

“Us as a panel we have been able to do really well, picking up West Gippsland in full has been a huge thing for us, we’ve been able to pick up a lot of umpires from the south-eastern suburbs.” 
Scholz encourages anyone interested in taking up umpiring to give it a shot and thanked those who organised the SGUA’s recent trip.

“Definitely do it, it’s terrific, we’d love to see some older people come along as well, we’re a bit short on goal umpires so we’d really love to see some people that have finished their football career and still want to stay involved, come and do that,” he said.

“Our committee and our executive have worked really hard this year, there’s been a lot of hard work go into it and the end result is terrific, they really can be patted on the back for the amount of work.”