Ryan, who officiated in five consecutive AFL grand finals as a central umpire between 2008 and 2011, was last night honoured at South West Sports’ sports star awards. 

Ryan received the chairperson’s award which recognises a participant who moves away from the region to achieve at the elite level and become a role model.

“The first thing is the enjoyment, you have to enjoy what you are doing,” Ryan said.

“The amount of dedication you need to reach the highest level, if you don’t enjoy it you won’t be able to do it week-in, week-out.

“Sometime when you work through the levels, the focus starts to turn to outcomes and you get outcome-driven and the enjoyment factor starts to wane. That’s when you start to run into trouble.”

The Melbourne-based barrister said he had grown up in Warrnambool loving football.

“I was never going to to play AFL football,” he said.

“It (umpiring) gave me an opportunity to participate in footy at the highest level. It was the only way I was going to get on the MCG on grand final day.”

He said crowd abuse had never been an issue for Ryan during his 215-game career.

“It’s more the media scrutiny that takes the enjoyment away,” he said.

“When you are doing the bigger games they get so heavily scrutinised. It’s important to move on and forget about a game but generally for the next two days they are talking about three or four decisions and why it was the case or why it wasn’t the case.

“From an umpire’s point of view it makes it a bit painful.”

Ryan, who retired after officiating in the 2011 grand final, said he was enjoying having more time in his busy schedule for family.

“You leave Friday nights and come home on Sundays most weeks,” he said of an umpire’s schedule.

He said after 10 years of umpiring in the AFL it was nice to have weekends back.

“It’s 20 years of weekends taken up when you go right back to when you started.”

Ryan was an All-Australian umpire in 2010 and was the fastest to reach 200 games after making his debut in round 1, 2003.

For more coverage from the awards, including photos of the recipients, see The Standard tomorrow.