Only relatively new to umpiring, Warrnambool's Zoe Graham was not expecting to be given the opportunity to be involved in an AFL game so early in her career.
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The teenager, in her second year as a member of the Warrnambool and District Football Umpires Association, has been invited, along with three other junior Warrnambool members, to lead the officials onto the ground at Friday's AFL game between Geelong and Port Adelaide at Kardinia Park.
The group - consisting of Graham, Dylan Denaro, Matt Gome and Kyle Hutchins - will also umpire the halftime Auskick games at the ground.
The initiative is part of the AFL's community umpiring week, aimed at highlighting the important contributions made by local umpires around the nation, creating awareness around umpiring pathways and promoting respect towards umpires.
Graham, who is running the boundary this year and will work towards central umpiring next season, is excited to be involved in the AFL fixture.
She praised the Warrnambool umpiring community for its supportive nature.
"It's really fun, it's a good community of people and nothing's competitive, everyone supports everyone," she told The Standard.
"It's really nice."
Graham has already reached her goal for 2024 which was to boundary umpire senior games.
She now hopes to improve her fitness levels.
Denaro, who has been a central umpire this season, is also eager to take to Kardinia Park on Saturday night.
The Emmanuel College student is aiming for further officiating opportunities in the Coates Talent League and hopes to eventually umpire at VFL level.
He has previously been a boundary umpire in Coates Talent League matches.
WDFUA president Andrew Lougheed declared community umpiring week a "great initiative".
He said the association's numbers in 2024 had "improved substantially, especially in our junior ranks".
"We can still do a bit of work around our central field umpires but what we're doing is we're actually encouraging some of our boundary umpires that have come up through our junior ranks to actually transition from boundary umpiring to central umpiring," he said.
"And that initiative, by introducing a development coach for field umpires to help that transition, is working really well and we've already got three umpires make the transition thus far in the season with more to come."
Matt Hughes
Matt is a sports journalist at The Standard.
Matt is a sports journalist at The Standard.
