AFL UMPIRE MENTOR PROGRAM MANUAL - AFL Community

My first crack at it
As a mentor, your ability to understand what emotions, aspirations, fears, challenges and
goals a beginning or learning umpire might be confronting will be crucial. The longer you
have been umpiring, the further back you will have to go to recall those early days – although
everyone will have one or two of those moments that will never leave them.
As an umpire rises through the ranks, he or she becomes a new umpire to some extent
at each level of the game and there are new challenges to confront. Before refl ecting on one
or two of your earliest memories, think back to what Mathew Head, Bryan Sheehan and
Mathew Nichols wrote about their early experiences.
Take time now, in the space provided, to recount two or three of your early memories as an
umpire that might be useful when working with a beginning or learning umpire. They may
not necessarily be from your very fi rst matches, but from your fi rst grand fi nal – as long as
the anecdote would have some value to another umpire who wants to learn more about the
game and develop his or her skills.
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UMPIRE MENTOR PROGRAM MANUAL