Celebrating South Australian umpires this week

Several AFL listed umpires will also be attending community umpiring training sessions across metropolitan area during Community Umpiring Week, to pass on their expertise to those who officiate local football games.

In further celebration of Community Umpiring Week, SANFL field umpire David Sobieraj will be offictating his 200th Hostplus SANFL match this weekend when Sturt takes on Glenelg at Thomas Farms on Sunday 4 May at 2:10pm.

A number of South Australian community umpires have also been recognised by the AFL for their service to local football, including:

• Trevor MacDonald – 50 years (Hills Umpires)
• Tim Agnew – 25 years (SAAS Umpires)
• Terry Crispin – 25 years (Adelaide Footy League Umpires)
• Andrew Modra – 25 years (Combined Southern Umpires)

AFL Executive General Manager of Game Development, Rob Auld, said he was looking forward to the industry coming together to celebrate Community Umpiring Week.

“Community Umpiring Week is a important initiative for Australian football as we recognise and promote the invaluable contribution umpires at all levels make to our game,” Auld said.

“Across the course of the week and on AFL match days we’re able to provide our local and junior umpires with experiences that help support their development and further their careers by engaging and learning from our elite umpiring team.

“As we strive to reach our vision of one million participants by 2033, we need to ensure we’re attracting more umpires to our game. While we were able to achieve a milestone number of more than 21,000 last year, we need to keep doing more to support each umpire and give them the best experiences when they’re in the system.

“On behalf of the AFL I would like to thank all our community umpires around Australia who officiate thousands of games every weekend, without them we simply couldn’t play.”