‘Razor’ Ray Chamberlain reveals highs and lows of umpiring
They’re booed and have every decision scrutinised by thousands of raucous fans. So why would anyone want to be an umpire? ‘Razor’ Ray Chamberlain tells Hamish McLachlan why he picked up the whistle and reveals his worst ever call.
AFL
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Many of us dream of playing in the Grand Final. Fewer dream of umpiring one. ‘Razor’ Ray Chamberlain filled in as an umpire one day as a 17 year old, and never wanted to do anything else. We spoke about coping with abuse, favourite players, Brownlow voting, and who he supports.
HM: What drew you to umpiring?
RC: Circumstances. I was 17 and I came home one day, and Mum was upset – I asked her what was going on, and she’d been at a conference all week at the Department of Health. It was centred around youth suicide, as it was eloquently referred to in the day. She said to me, “Every single slide reminds me of your brother”. That was my youngest brother, Brian, who was 12 at the time. Reflecting back now, Mum was right. Whether it was the rugged haircut, the daggy clothes, the disassociation … she saw enough to be worried. She asked me to go and watch him play footy and look after him.
HM: Aussie rules football?
RC: Yes – 8am for the mighty Tuggeranong Lions in the middle of winter in Canberra – not the greatest place to be. I turned up, and there was no umpire. The President of our club said, “Ray, we will fill your car up with petrol and won’t let anyone hang any crap on you if you umpire the game”. Mum always gave me 20 bucks for petrol so I pocketed that and said “I’m in!”
HM: How’d you go?
RC: At half time a gentleman by the name of Bob Stacey, who is still in my world, came and saw me and said, “How long have you been doing this for?” I said, “About 45 minutes, Bob”. He said, “You could earn six figures a year doing this part time!” I was 17 and working at Eagle Boys at the time, Hame, so he had my attention.
HM: You were playing at the same time? Were you a good footballer?
RC: I was OK. I was a year older than guys like Justin Blumfield, Aaron Hamill, Craig Bolton. They were all from our area. I played in teams that won premierships, I played some rep footy, but I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t big enough or tough enough, to be honest.
HM: Your dad made you play rugby league?
RC: He said, “You’ve got to toughen up, you’ve got to learn how to scrap”. He made me play rugby league for two years, and I remember my first training I turned up, with these two guys kicking these 60m barrels up and down the ground thinking they must be in the seniors. They were my teammates! They were the biggest dudes! I was 15 and hadn’t really started hitting puberty yet.
HM: How’d you go?
RC: I loved it. I learnt some hard lessons early, got run over a few times, but it was a really important 18 months of my life.
HM: You went to University of Canberra, got your Education Degree, but kept your hand in with the umpiring?
RC: I got offered two full time jobs after the degree – one in Canberra, and one by the AFL in Sydney to umpire reserves footy, and run a development type job in umpiring. That for me was the closest step to the AFL, which is what I wanted to do.
HM: You really wanted to umpire more than educate?
RC: Absolutely. I remember I did a couple of games early, and I was hooked. I was a bit of an anomaly as in Canberra you either had to be 56 years old or older, and 120kg with silver hair to umpire. That’s who everyone was. There were no young people doing it, they were all dads who’d give up their time. I was the exception to that rule. I was seventeen, young, fit, played and wanted to do it as a life, not a hobby.
HM: Even early on, you remember getting negative feedback from the sidelines at amateur footy?
RC: Yes, sadly – under 15’s, under 16’s …. every level I’ve umpired. People are emotionally involved, but sometimes they maybe don’t check themselves when they turn up and they’re still carrying whatever they’ve carried from the week, and trying to unload it.
HM: We are emotional beings – and not always rational.
RC: We are all living lives, and we’re all carrying stuff, so I can understand how that can come out. I’ll go to grounds now and I might be walking my dog, and you’re at a local ground where a 14-year-old kid is out there umpiring, and someone’s going to town on him or her. It’s pretty hard to expect that kid to front up with a positive mindset the next week. I think it’s a real challenge for the game.
HM: Two hours of footy on a Friday night. How many decisions are you either making, or not making?
RC: Thousands. We deal in metrics like ‘reasonable time’, ‘prior opportunity’ and ‘genuine attempt’. You could have a perspective on that which is totally justifiable, I could see it from 180 degrees the other way, your north pole, I’m south pole, and I could mount an argument as well. That’s why fifty thousand people at the G’ go “Baaalllll!”, and fifty thousand at the same time go “Baaaack!”, then a weird little bald guy with a green shirt on says “Play on!”, and then 100,000 people all agree on one thing – the umpire was wrong. That’s the game we play.
HM: If you have a very good game, how many decisions are you getting wrong?
RC: Anywhere between 0 and 4.
HM: If you get a call wrong early on a Friday night, does that really impact your next two hours?
RC: The short answer is you can’t allow it to.
HM: You can compartmentalise it?
RC: I feel as though at this stage of my career, I’m really good at doing that.
HM: Initially?
RC: It would really irritate me and I’d carry it for a while – and any amount of time, is too long. The critical piece is getting the next decision right.
HM: Can you hear the voices in the crowd?
RC: It depends. The big games, with a big crowd, it’s like you’ve dived under a wave, it’s like a rolling noise, nothing specific. If you get a game where it’s not as well populated …
HM: 15,000 at Ballarat ….
RC: Yep, you can hear, “Steve, make it two sugars mate” and the abuse is crystal clear and it can get really personal. It provides a different challenge because you can hear everything. You can’t react, and you shouldn’t respond – but you really want to.
HM: How do you go with the noise and the abuse?
RC: I used to be affected by it.
HM: Monday to Friday you’d be flat. Depressed, dangerously so?
RC: There was a period of time where I wasn’t well and it would impact me. You find yourself trying to shrink away, avoid the Monday morning footy chat in the office, the cafe, etc. It wasn’t until four or five years into my career that I did any sort of media interview.
HM: Because?
RC: A combination of me not wanting to do it, but back then there was a big curtain put down over umpires at the AFL as the view was they shouldn’t really be seen or heard from. In my view we missed an opportunity to humanise the umpires. By not having umpires seen as simply normal people with emotions, it kept the disconnect between the fans and the umpires. I believe the disconnect creates misunderstanding that manifests in to an increased level of vitriol.
HM: Did a couple of years out of the game with injury help you manage the abuse?
RC: I had two seasons out of the game post knee surgery, and it looked as though I wouldn’t umpire footy again. I realised how much I actually just love umpiring AFL footy, and it gave me some time to get away, reflect and get perspective. I made a decision that if I got back, I was going to enjoy it, regardless of what the outer was yelling at me. It’s a privilege to be out there.
HM: But you did?
RC: I used to take it very personally. I’d spent ten years striving to become an elite AFL umpire before I was afforded the opportunity as one of 32 people in Australia who had that privilege. That contract gets renewed every year, and if you’re not up to standard, you get the flick. I’d think “I’ve been doing finals every year for 14 years, and you’re slagging me off! I make mistakes, and I know I’m not everyone’s flavour, I get that, but ease up on the abuse”. Now though, I’ve got myself out of sookies corner and I understand that people love their footy team, and people go to the footy passionately to support, and I love that.
HM: Opening bounce at the grand final – are you more nervous than round 16, Sunday afternoon?
RC: By a street. It’s silly, because ultimately, it’s the same task. When I go down to the oval now and practice, I’ll put ten up straight no problem at all. That’s the whole challenge of umpiring footy. Brilliant at Frankston, but how do you go Friday night at the MCG when the chime goes off in your ear to say the ad’s finished and you have four seconds to execute your skill.
HM: When you make a bad decision, do you look at the replay screens?
RC: You try desperately not to – particularly if you know you’ve mucked it up. All it will do is affirm what we already know, and make you feel s..t.
HM: Worst decision you’ve made?
RC: Easy. Second season, Friday night football, Hawthorn vs. Carlton at Marvel stadium. The ball gets kicked inside fifty, and a young kid playing about his fourth game by the name of Marc Murphy, gets speared in the head, it was obvious. Everyone in the world sees it, except for me. I don’t see it, I call ‘play on’. Marc says to me “Why didn’t you pay that free kick?”. I said to him, “Listen, I’ve made a mistake. I can’t change it. I’m moving on, and I suggest you do the same”. A year later, I’m umpiring Carlton vs. Port Adelaide in Adelaide. I would have paid Marc maybe four or five free kicks off the ball, he’d been targeted and thrown around a bit. I’m on the flight home getting ready for takeoff, reading, and I feel this hand on my shoulder, it’s Marc. He says, “I’m ready to move on now”.
HM: Brilliant. Did you text Phil Davis post a final?
RC: I made a real bad blue. I thought he pushed Mason Cox in the back, and I didn’t make great position to be honest. No free kick. My blue. He was immaculate. I’ve got it flat out wrong, and so I felt horrible. It was an elimination final and GWS got beaten, thankfully by more than a kick. I texted Dylan Buckley, and I said, “Listen. If you see Phil today, can you please pass on my sincerest apologies for my mistake”. About 5 minutes later I get a photo back from Dylan and Phil, and it was thumbs up. That was cool.
HM: Did you once approach Sam Mitchell?
RC: I ran into him one day at Monash University, Sam was studying there, and we crossed paths. I’d seen something that had happened in a game, and he was frustrated on the field with one of our young guys. He’d had a crack at him, and this guy was in just his fourth or fifth game, very young, and he’d made a mistake. I just wanted to explain that to him, if you have a 17, 18-year-old draftee who makes an error, what do you do? Do you blue him, do you smash him, or do you get around him, explain it to him, help him grow? Sam was unreal to get a coffee, and he was mature enough and emotionally intelligent enough to have a conversation around it and accept it. I’m very grateful for that exchange.
HM: Best sledger you’ve ever heard?
RC: There’s been some very funny guys. Andrew Mackie, very sharp. Ben Hudson was very amusing. I remember Dylan Roberton had a head band on one day, he was playing at Fremantle, and he was only young. Ben said, “You do realise there’s probably going to be half a million people watching this game, and you’ve made a decision to come out with that in your hair”. It wasn’t nasty, but it was enough to get inside the head.
HM: Brownlow votes. Everyone says you look at stats, and you collaborate. How does it actually work?
RC: We definitely collaborate, but we are given no formal statistical data whatsoever.
HM: My wife accuses me of having a favourite child. She says, “You’re not allowed to”. Are you allowed to have a favourite player?
RC: I think you can watch games and go, I love the way this guy goes about it. When Juddy used to rip away from a contest, he’d have the ball in both hands, shoulders back. My mum’s favourite is Lance Franklin. I’m pretty sure Mum would prefer to get a phone call from Lance than myself. I loved Cyril, but equally, I loved Mark Ricciuto. I loved the impact he had.
HM: If your ‘favourite’ player is engaged, and there’s a 50/50 call, does human nature mean you go one way or the other?
RC: It’s a great question, because everyone else watches the game through the lens of a fan. When you are umpiring, you’re in your zone, doing your thing and you sort of forget teams and players.
HM: We are in uncharted waters with the coronavirus – are you and the OK to umpire?
RC: Hame, what I think we can all agree on is that this is very much an unpredictable set of circumstances. I have great confidence in the leadership at the AFL in terms of them obtaining the very best and most up-to-date information in relation to this matter and subsequently, on balance, making the most appropriate decisions for all stakeholders.
HM: You might be umpiring a Grand Final away from the MCG…..in late November the way things look.
RC: If I was afforded the privilege to officiate in another Grand Final Hame, I’d be happy to travel to Mars to do it! My view right now is to try and be as calm, malleable and supportive as I can possibly be. That’s easy enough to say right now, the real challenge will be to live those words through action and behaviour as things progress.
HM: Do you wear high vis yellow out socially?
RC: (laughs) A lot – you not been to the night clubs recently mate? Everyone’s wearing it! Grey shorts too. That combo kills it.
HM: Do you barrack for anyone?
RC: Yeah, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
HM: Smart. Thanks.
RC: Thanks, Hame.
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