This Weekend the Geelong Umpires celebrate their 80th Anniversary as an organisation and officiating football in the Geelong Region. From humble beginnings of five men seated on fruit boxes in the local pub back in 1935, to becoming one of the strongest umpiring organisations in Australia, we say thank you to all of our past and present umpires who have donned the white, orange and now yellow uniform.
CALLING ALL PAST AND PRESENT MEMBERS!
Next weekend The Geelong Football Umpires’ League will celebrate their 80th year of service to local football since being established in 1935. To celebrate this milestone the Board of Management has a weekend of activities for all past and present umpires to attend. 2015 has been the year for big milestones for our umpires. At the start of the year we celebrated Noel Hooper umpiring his 1400 match. Last weekend another of our Life Members Darren Baensch umpired his 600 game at Barwon Heads. Darren was able to talk a couple of past umpires and legends of the GFUL, Murray Fanning and Mark Bushfield out of retirement to run with him for the game. This weekend another Life member, Peter Schilder will bring up game number 500. Both of these guys have given so much to the association with Darren being a past Field Umpires Assistant Coach and Peter helping out on the Board as well as our New Umpire Welcoming Program.
Did you know that to cover every single game of Football across the Geelong Region with the bare minimum, 2 field, 2 boundary and 2 Goal umpires, we would need over 700 umpires each week! Currently our membership is 379, which is the highest it has ever been in our 80 year history.
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Author
Each week during the season AFL Barwon Regional Director of Umpiring Jock Hillgrove will post an article which is also published in the local football record. Archives
June 2019
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