AFL female umps scandal: Centre bounce tipped to be scrapped for umpires
A landmark exemption was granted to allow a female state league umpire not to bounce the ball in a ruling that could pave the way for the tradition to be scrapped altogether.
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AFL umpires have received fresh hope their longstanding wish for the centre bounce to be scrapped could finally be granted by the AFL Commission.
The Herald Sun understands a landmark exemption was granted for VFL umpire Jordyn Pearson not to bounce the ball when she made her state-league debut last week.
The AFL-funded report into female umpiring highlighted how young girls were being poorly coached on how to execute the skill.
Umpires who struggle to bounce the ball — which includes some of the AFL’s best decision makers — have had their careers stalled because it is a key requirement for selection.
One state-league umpiring manager taught a female umpire a bouncing technique that suited her and was shocked to then witness she had regressed after crossing to a different league.
“She walked out and her first bounce had changed completely. Her technique was based on a male,” he told the report.
“Bouncing a footy, a male has the ability to bounce it with his hands straight up and straight through because they have the brute force within the shoulders and their torso.
“When I looked at (her action) we tried that and I said to her, ‘That’s not going to work for you. It’s not going to work. I think we need to develop you a sling action similar to when you hit a golf ball, it’s all wrist’.
“But then when I got to the first game and saw her trying to bounce just all brute force, I rang (the coach) on the Monday and said, ‘What the hell mate? What have you done?’”
AFL umpires are desperate to scale back the bounce to the start of every quarter – instead of after every goal – or ban it completely.
While making the bounce extinct was not one of the report’s 11 recommendations put to the AFL to boost female participation, it would be a small step towards clearing a pathway that has been exposed as unsafe.
Craig Fleer, Alex Whetton and Curtis Deboy are the best bouncers in the AFL although several men including Ray Chamberlain have struggled to generate enough height.
Andre Gianfagna’s errant bounce wiped two seconds off the clock at the last centre bounce in Western Bulldogs’ one-point loss to Adelaide last month.
On Tuesday night the AFL claimed Pearson did not bounce the ball because of the conditions at Windy Hill.
“Occasionally some umpires opt not to bounce the ball, which can be because of conditions. It has happened previously,” an AFL spokesperson said.
“No field umpires in that match bounced the ball after quarter time because of the conditions. On the day the clubs were informed as a courtesy and there were no issues.”
But sources had informed the Herald Sun several days before the match that Pearson did not have to bounce the ball.
Pearson was promoted to the VFL during the AFL’s Community Umpiring Round, which was ironically held when community umpires across Australia were outraged at the AFL for failing to communicate the horrific findings from its own report — “Girls and women in Australian football umpiring: Understanding registration, participation and retention”.
League boss Gillon McLachlan admitted on Friday he had not received the report when the Herald Sun published it on May 2.
Pearson joined Annie Mirabile and Eleni Glouftsis as the only female field umpires to officiate a VFL match when she officiated Box Hill’s 94-point win against Essendon.
She also umpired this year’s women’s grand final, which was her 16th AFLW match.
Former AFL coach Ross Lyon said last month “we’re all sick of” the bounce debate.
“Just throw it up,” he said.
AFL SLAMMED FOR ‘DISGUSTING’ GLOUFTIS TREATMENT
The AFL has come under fire for treating Eleni Glouftsis as a “poster child” and not providing the league’s only female field umpire with any back-up support.
The 30-year-old has been dropped four times this season while continually being singled out for “every decision and mistake that she makes” because she is a woman.
There is not a single female field umpire on the cusp of joining Glouftsis, who first officiated an AFL game in the 2016 pre-season and has been forced to carry the expectations and aspirations of future female umpires ever since.
Glouftsis is one of football’s most respected officials for her work in actively implementing strategies to help put a stop to the toxic, male-dominated culture plaguing community umpiring across Australia.
But the AFL has played dead to the well-known issue for so long that sexual abuse and harassment suffered by female umpires was exposed by 27 participants interviewed for a report that was completed only last August.
“Eleni Glouftsis was just a KPI for the umpiring department, and that’s all she ever was to them,” former state umpiring manager Pierce Field told the Herald Sun recently.
“It’s disgusting to use someone like that. What kind of coach puts an athlete in a position like that and then not provide any pathway or support underneath it?
“They’ve put up a posterchild and there’s no one behind her.”
While Glouftsis has been dropped four times, twice she has earned a recall because of Covid or injuries.
On Saturday she officiated the Collingwood-Footscray VFL match, with her promising AFL career yielding 58 matches (seven in 2022).
About 2 per cent of umpires at AFL level are female yet the league whimsically wants to reach 40 per cent nationally – albeit with no deadline set.
Glouftsis is a remarkable role model and fringe AFL field umpire who AFLW trailblazer Daisy Pearce said she sympathises with.
“The hard thing to watch is she gets named with every decision and mistake that she makes,” Pearce said.
“If another umpire makes a mistake it’s just ‘the umpire’ because we don‘t know their name. They’re always anonymous, apart from a handful.
“But with Eleni … we name her every time she‘s on our screen.
“It’s so hard for her because she is one out, so she ends up carrying all of them, when in actual fact all umpires make mistakes. She gets hers attributed to her and her name every single time.
“I guess that’s a lived experience for a lot of minority groups on all sorts of different things. And in umpiring, she is the minority.”
Unlike ‘Razor’ Ray Chamberlain, Pearce said Glouftsis had never asked to stand out.
“She’s just trying to be a good umpire,” Pearce said on SEN.
“To a degree he‘s (Chamberlain) chosen that, but I don’t think Eleni has chosen any of it.”
Field, who was a key interviewee for the AFL’s report into female umpiring, said the AFL had hung Glouftsis out to dry by neglecting female umpires underneath her.
“It’s testament to Eleni’s character and her resilience that she has spoken so openly to this report,” Field said.
“But this is not Eleni Glouftsis complaining about what’s happening at AFL level. She’s a professional athlete, she knows what she’s signed up to.
“What we’re talking about is systemic issues in community football – the place we send our children to learn their life lessons.”
Glouftsis wrote a powerful foreword for the report that most of the AFL executive didn’t bother to read until it was published by the Herald Sun this month.
“In reading this research, I felt frustrated that girls and women in umpiring roles are still facing the same obstacles and challenges that I faced almost 16 years ago,” Glouftsis said.
“I had hoped things would have improved. They certainly should have.”
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