Gary Hosie How long have you been umpiring? Eleven years. Who has been the biggest influence on your umpiring? Bob Bertoli. Name five people you would like to have to dinner? Tiger Woods, Gordon Ramsay, Trevor Marmalade, Robin Williams and Andrew Symonds. Favorite food? Any roast meal. Any superstitions on Saturday before the game? None. What rule in football would you like to see changed and why? Kicking out from full-back should wait for the flags to be waved. Your favourite ground and why? Barooga, it’s good to run on. What book are you reading at the moment? Scott Draper’s Too Good. I have been umpiring for 35 years (still haven’t got it right yet) and heard some funny things come over the fence towards me during the times. If you don’t know me I am slow, round and have a body like a busted sausage. I heard a new one on Sunday before last which was “treadmill” because the first step will be the quickest, but some others I’ve heard come my way over the years are “where did you do your pre-season at Pizza Hut?” , ‘’put down the menu and pick up the rule book”, “give the lasagna away’’, “Umpire Len, how much for a free kick?’’ after paying only four frees for the day at Echuca back in 2000 and “have you seen your toes lately?” . It’s all good fun, while I personally don’t have a problem with the attention but some do. Anyway my view is that you fans pay your money and you can say what you like and once I am off the ground the abuse stops and come and have beer with me and discuss what you think about umpiring, maybe you know someone who would like to take up umpiring so that I can retire. A lot of our goalies would run thirds in the morning and goals in the afternoon and with centrals we are ageing a lot with most of the good umpires up around the 50 years old mark. One would think they can’t give much more. We really need thirty 30 year olds. We have got a couple of 40 years old and one 30-year-old and the rest are teenagers, who will probably have to step up into a world that they may not be ready for, and beings kids in this harsh environment of umpiring they may only need one bad day to be scarred for life. We need some place to bring them a long slowly, but we may have to throw them in the deep end. So what is the answer? Is there too many clubs? Do we do too many leagues? Do we get rid of the seconds comp? Do we make the captains of each club able to pay free kicks like they did when footy was just starting out? I am not sure what the answer is. Bottom line is we are short and that has to affect the quality of the footy games in the area, so if you know of anybody interested in umpiring get them down here. All I know is that some us have given our all for umpiring and it has been the best time of our lives and you should try it, it’s tough, it’s fun and the people I have meet along the way have been nothing short of fantastic. This week winners of the Peter Foote raffle James Meek. Want to be an umpire, ring Greg Sidebottom on 0419 154 097. Any way see you out there. Len Hort.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 06:44:44 +0000
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