Tiny umpire Frank Vergona was a giant of the old VFA
His legs covered in oil and his short white shorts hitched, Frank Vergona was a legendary umpire in the VFA. It’s 40 years since he did the first of six grand finals. Here he opens up about his long career as an association official.
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More than 30 years after he last umpired in the VFA, they still remember him.
Still remember his tight shorts and close-fitting shirt.
Still remember the oiled-up legs and arms that seemed to attract every ray of the sun and made him glisten like a jewell.
Still remember how the tiny man would circle the big men exhorting them to move away when tempers were boiling and things had become physical.
They still remember Frank Vergona.
And he enjoys the recognition very much. He always did.
“Somehow I became a personality umpire, didn’t I?’’ he was saying on Monday.
When the VFA was at the height of its popularity in the 1970s and 80s, fired by Sunday television coverage and a cast of champion players and a troop of tough guys, Vergona enjoyed a profile almost as large as some of the household names he umpired.
He was a little fellow — he stood 5’3’’ in the old — but among supporters of the old VFA he lives on as a big deal of the association.
It’s 40 years since Vergona umpired the first of his six VFA grand finals.
It was the match between Port Melbourne and Coburg at the Junction Oval, and the Borough’s victory was the first of three on the bounce under the coaching of Gary Brice.
Three years ago Port staged a tribute night for its legendary full-forward Fred Cook, and Vergona turned up in support, chatting to Brice and a host of other former Port Melbourne players.
A lot of people asked him to be in a photo. Neatly turned out and looking supremely fit, he accommodated them with a smile as wide as the Norm Goss grandstand.
Ahead of umpiring his 250th VFA game in 1989, the Sun’s George Salpigtidis took photos of Vergona. One hangs in the loungeroom of his unit in the eastern suburbs. In another he has a whistle to his lips and holds the ball in the air, shorts and shirt hugging a looked-after frame.
Vergona retired a few matches later, unhappy the VFA panel had come under the control of the AFL.
He was past 40 and content with what he’d achieved.
In his last couple of years, even clubs had come forward with awards for him. Williamstown named him the VFA personality of the year and Brunswick presented him with a plaque for 250 games. The association itself acknowledged his long service to the competition.
“He was a character who fitted in with that period of the VFA,’’ former VFA president John Grieve said on Tuesday.
“You had guys like Fred Cook and Mark Fotheringham playing, and then you had Frankie Vergona trying to run around umpiring on his own. There were others too, of course, like Maurie Stabb, and they had some colour about them, a bit like Ray Chamberlain in the AFL today.
“Frank was boss, and he was a very good umpire in a great era. Seriously professional? No. Serious? Yes. Semi-professional? Yes. And everyone had a great time, Frank included. He had that charisma about him.’’
Vergona was a much-decorated umpire by the time he blew the while for the last time in the VFA.
Yet for the first few years of his career he doubted he could make the grade. His confidence and fitness would become his strengths. But as a young man he lacked both.
Vergona had started umpiring at the age of 18 in Geelong, where he grew up. In 1967 he joined the VFL reserve grade panel, which in those days supplied umpires for the league Under 19s as well as major suburban competitions like Federal, Diamond Valley and Eastern District.
He took a two-year break from 1969 to focus on his university studies.
When Vergona returned to umpiring, it was with the VFA, joining the list in 1971 after an interview at the old VFA House in Jolimont Terrace.
He remembers that season for being told to get a haircut and ticked off for his failure to attend meetings.
“I’ll get a haircut when you start giving me better appointments,’’ he wrote to umpiring officials. A letter of reply came back swiftly: “You’ve now been deleted from our list.’’
Taking his first teaching appointment at Geelong High School, Vergona went back to the Geelong league in 1972.
Two years he later rejoined the VFA, with the promise he would attend every training session at Olympic Park on Monday and Wednesday nights.
His first senior match was in Division 2 between Northcote and Waverley at Westgarth St.
“I didn’t go too well,’’ Vergona said. “I got there about an hour and half too early. I was too nervous and I wasn’t quite fit enough either. I reckon I needed a full season in the VFA seconds before getting a senior game.’’
Before he reached his first 30 senior games he was dropped five times.
One match is lodged in his memory: Prahran and Port Melbourne at Toorak Park in 1975.
“Big game, big crowd and I’m not up to it,’’ he said. “I’m just not up to it. I really umpired poorly. I paid far too many free kicks. I panicked. I knew it was a poor performance, knew I wouldn’t survive. It was the worst performance I ever turned in as a senior umpire. I knew I’d get the bullet.’’
He said the occasion got to him. In the Port Melbourne rooms before the game, he sensed Borough coach Norm Brown could see he was edgy.
His biggest setback came in 1976, when he failed to put Port Melbourne hard man Bob “Bullwinkle’’ Profitt into the book for striking Caulfield full forward Tony Smith at North Port Oval.
“Bob didn’t spare the horses. Smith took the mark and he (Profitt) thumped him in the head and put him down. Smith couldn’t take his kick. He had to be taken off the ground. For some reason, I didn’t make the report,’’ Vergona said. “And I knew I was in trouble. If you didn’t report, you would be dropped. None of this rubbish today where they wait for the video. Back then, if you didn’t report you were in trouble. It cost me.’’
It cost him more than two years; he wasn’t brought back to senior football until the late stages of the 1979 season.
“They lost faith in me,’’ he said.
It was a testing period for Vergona. He umpired more than 50 reserves match on the hop and thought his time in the VFA was over.
Roy Groom was a leading VFA umpire at the time Vergona was fiddling away on the fringes, and halfway through the 1979 season Vergona joined him in athletics at the Collingwood Harriers.
Fitness was everything to an umpire in the VFA; these were the days of one umpire controlling matches and 16 players per side. The ball shot from end to end as teams totted up high scores. It was nothing for a quarter to run for 35 minutes.
Vergona had been on the heavy side. He improved his conditioning at the Harriers, gained confidence and earned a senior recall.
A corner had been turned, and in 1980 he established himself among the leading lights on the umpires’ list.
“Gee, Vergona is going well,’’ he heard people say. “He might even get a final.’’ What a turnaround.
Televised games came to him and the increased exposure prompted him to create a “different look’’.
“I’d started shaving my legs and had a special oil made up for me by a trainer,’’ he said. “He said to me, ‘This is not like bloody baby oil, this will stay there and if there’s any sun shining the definition in your quads will glisten’.’’
He had his shorts taken up and hitched them high — “They became my trademark’’ — and his shirt was a tight fit too.
Vergona felt “streamlined’’ and confident. He was “turning it on’’.
“I’d got a good reputation at last and I was umpiring well,’’ he said.
“People knew me. They couldn’t miss me. Everything I touched turned to gold. But I’d worked extremely hard for it.’’
Vergona was appointed to the 1980 grand final alongside Groom (the VFA had hurriedly adopted a two-umpire system for the finals).
It was a fine match. Port kicked six goals to two in the final quarter to grab an 11-point win. Vergona will never forget the roar of Port supporters when Jimmy Christou kicked a goal to make victory certain for the Borough.
It was the first of five consecutive grand finals for Vergona. He did the Division 2 decider in 1981, Division 1 in 1982 and 1983, and Division 2 in 1984 and 1987.
In the ’82 grand final he was in the “zone’’. He felt he could run on air, and that he could run forever. When the other umpire had the play he was dying for the ball to come to him.
It was an exciting period in his life.
“Well, they were the halcyon years of the VFA, where the VFA rode to success on the back of television. And it was big. Everyone watched the VFA,’’ Vergona said.
“There was no VFL as it was then known. So people tuned in, and that’s what they talked about around the water cooler on a Monday morning. ‘Did you see the fight, did you see the brawl?’ Because she’d be on for young and old. It was tough going. You had to know how to control men and you needed eyes in the back of your head.’’
Vergona got to know the players by their first names, by studying the team lists and dropping in to the social club after matches and chatting with them.
He believed it helped him restore order when things were getting out of hand and led players to let him off when he made a mistake. “I’d broken the ice,’’ Vergona said. “I felt I had their respect. They could accept a blue, particularly when you were prepared to acknowledge it.
“I might say, ‘I stuffed up there, sorry, do you ever make a blue?’ and we’d have a laugh.’’
As Brice saw it, Vergona was a consistent and fair umpire, had a sense of humour, held no grudges and loved the game.
And, of course, he was quite a sight with his tight shorts and “lathered-up’’ legs.
“He was always great company after the game, even if you’d given him a hard time, as grumpy coaches tend to do,’’ Brice said.
“I was always happy when Frank was doing Port Melbourne games. I knew we would get a fair go from him.’’
Vergona was hopelessly devoted to umpiring, adhering to a strict fitness routine and diet that he maintains to this day (he does push-ups as comfortably as most people take a breath).
He put umpiring ahead of everything else, even his career as a schoolteacher. Vergona put in the hours. But he also put a few other umpires off side, he said.
“When I had that initial success, I wanted more. It became the No.1 thing in my life,’’ he said.
“Everything else was secondary. I lived for it. I became even more focused and many of them (umpiring colleagues) probably thought I was aloof.
“I was so focused, and I was so intense … I never went on end-of-season trips. I’m a non-drinker and I couldn’t be bothered with all the rubbish that went with those. I had better things to do. They probably thought, ‘Oh, he’s up himself’. In the end my greatest strength probably became my greatest weakness. I was so intense … if I could have been more relaxed it would have allowed me even more success. But I did umpire six grands finals, so I can’t complain, can I?’’
After retiring from the VFA, Vergona umpired APS games (he’d spent the last 27 years of his teaching career at Melbourne Grammar, teaching Latin).
All told he umpired from 1966 to 2005, totting up hundreds of matches.
But it’s his VFA years that brought him lasting fame.
It will be a long time before they no longer remember Frank Vergona.