UNDER the old southern Stand in a quiet tunnel is a single black door.
In front of it sits a security guard, inside it stands another and around a corner you find the men in charge with policing our game.
It is midday Saturday and Collingwood is about to clash with Geelong at the MCG. But while the circus is building upstairs, umpires Jeff Dalgleish, Ben Ryan and Scott Jeffery are quietly narrowing their focus.
Dalgleish is a West Australian occupational safety and environmental adviser, Jeffery is an accountant from Tasmania and Ben Ryan is a primary school teacher from Queensland.
But for the next two hours these men have the impossible job — achieving consistency in a 360-degree game with a swag of grey areas open to interpretation.
The Herald Sun has been granted inside access to watch how they do it.
Ryan takes time out from his preparation to have a chat.
“In days gone by when I was following a particular team I was a bit more passionate about them and not interested in much else,” Ryan says.
And who was that team? It’s perhaps the dirtiest question you can ask an umpire.
“I can’t remember,” Ryan says instantly. “When you walk into AFL House and sign your contract, all that ends there.”
He takes a proactive strategy to crowd abuse.
“My approach is to just look at them and try to connect with them so they think ‘Oh that person is actually a human being that I’m being extremely rude to’,” Ryan says.
“I think that’s a huge part of it; people dehumanise us in some ways.”
Umpires assistant coach and former whistleblower Michael Jennings calls the men in for a quick address. He talks of “clear changeovers” and “non-negotiables”.
It’s time to make our way across the ground to meet the players. We walk into the Collingwood rooms which are a blur of massaging, strapping and changing.
media_cameraUmpire Scott Jeffrey bounces the ball. Picture: Wayne Ludbey
Jeffery bumps into Mason Cox. There must be a metre height difference between them. “Hi Mason, how’s the hand?” Jeffery asks.
Cox raises his big left mit. “It’s better than last week, that’s for sure,” the American replies.
We find the Cats in a huddle back out on the ground. The wind has picked up, prompting goal umpires Brett Rogers and Michael Palm to get out early and study its direction.
Back in the umpires rooms the radio vests are being hooked up so Dalgleish, Ryan and Jeffery can communicate with each other and with Jennings up in the stands during the game.
Without them, Jennings says, officiating footy in 2016 would be “impossible”. “To talk to someone 50m away just can’t happen. At Adelaide Oval, for example, they struggle to hear the siren”.
It’s 1pm and time to leave the umpires to their own thoughts. Guidelines state that only the umpires and security are allowed in the rooms in the last 40 minutes before the first bounce.
“If you raise their anxiety and adrenaline levels you’re not going to get the right outcome — they’ve got to work it out for themselves,” umpires boss Hayden Kennedy says.
We’ve made our way upstairs to a corporate box in the southern Stand at the city end of the MCG. Sitting in the front row is boundary umpire observer Scott Hutton and goal umpire observer Steve Stirling.
Behind them is Jennings and field umpires high performance analyst Briana Harvey. Kennedy stands at the back and, like Jennings and Harvey, doesn’t miss a thing.
Over the next four quarters many decisions — and non-decisions — are time-stamped for video review. Jennings will spend up to five hours “coding” each game, providing each contentious ruling in three different camera angles.
After a review meeting on Tuesday, each umpire is presented with a comprehensive “feedback report” assessing them on decision making’ ‘management’ ‘skill’ communication’ ‘support’ ‘bounce’ and ‘coaching focus’. Across the season each umpire has statistics kept on free kicks that were ‘correct’, ‘missed’ or ‘unwarranted’.
If you thought analysis of the game was extreme, the magnifying glass put on the umpires is massive.
“Here comes our team,” Jennings says enthusiastically. We instinctively look to the players race before realising the umpires walking out. You can hear a pin drop.
Kennedy says: “Clapping is one thing we’ll never get.”
media_cameraJack Crisp and Jesse White celebrate a goal. Picture: AAP
Collingwood start in a blaze, but it only takes a few minutes to realise this won’t be an easy game to officiate. It’s tough, sometimes scrappy, and there’s plenty of niggle.
Lachie Henderson nearly has his hand kicked off by a Collingwood player but Dalgleish doesn’t pay it. “Dalgleish, review, kicking in danger’ Jennings says. It goes into the computer for further examination.
Mason Cox looks to be held by Harry Taylor but Jeffery lets it go. Kennedy says: “That’s a hold”
There’s constant talk from umpire to player and player to umpire. “Let him run,” Dalgleish yells at a Pies player.
It’s intense in the umpires box too. Everything is reviewed. When Jeffery screams at Cox to get back on the mark for a kick-in, Kennedy says: “That’s where Scott can lower his voice, Mason is standing right beside him’”.
At quarter-time Jennings gets onto the microphone. “Really good ... but I reckon we need to keep an eye on that forward observation with the big marking contests.”
As he’s speaking, Palm has made his way to the middle to tell the umpires to keep an eye on one defender whose been getting away with holds close to goal.
It’s a team effort. The game they’re officiating demands it.
In the second quarter the ferocity goes up another notch. The players are testing each other, testing the umpires and several are constantly complaining.
Jeffery responds: “OK, I didn’t see it that way. We’re watching, we’re trying.”
At halftime the game has already had the same amount of free-kicks at the Hawthorn-Sydney game the night before. Jennings takes an iPad into the rooms to show the umpires several clips. He’s happy, though.
“I reckon we’ve had some terrific non-decisions where they’ve ducked into it and are searching for the contact and we haven’t bought in. Keep that up,” he says.
It’s not unlike a coach’s halftime address. “Decisions happen, sometimes you get blindsided. I remember,” Jennings says on the way back upstairs.
“But we can control things like positioning, changeovers and how we communicate.”
Out on the ground the trio warm-up for the second half with some centre bouncing. They’ve been flawless and go on to finish the game without a recall.
It’s something that can’t be undersold. Some umpires put too much pressure on themselves if the skill has deserted them.
media_cameraUmpires Jeff Dalgleish and Scott Jeffrey. Picture: Wayne Ludbey
Minutes later Dalgleish pays a free kick when he’s not the controlling umpire and Kennedy loves it. “That was an area he hadn’t been doing well and that was a good one,” he says.
A Geelong defender is penalised for holding and complains. Ryan comes straight back with: “You grabbed his jumper, mate”.
Collingwood steady to secure a comfortable win, but it’s been anything but comfortable for the umpires. It’s been a tough game to officiate.
“You can’t umpire this sport and not make errors,” Kennedy says. “It’s an impossibility. You’ve just got to limit the damage.”
Jennings believes they have. Asked for how many they got wrong, he says six.
A thorough debrief begins in the same changeroom where the day began. The umpires are judged on their five values — mastery, united, support, integrity and courage.
Jeffery steers the meeting, praising Palm for telling them about the holding defender at quarter time. “The confidence to come up and tell us that sort of stuff is brilliant,” he says.
Bouncing is praised, as are the non-decisions and the application of the advantage rule.
“It was a pretty intense game,” Ryan says.
“I don’t know how many tackles there were, but it felt like there were heaps of decisions to be made and a lot of processing.”
There’s ice baths and stretching and more recovery. Yet after all that, the toughest task of the day is now upon them.
It’s the part of the job no one sees — the Brownlow votes.