Fifteen adults, one teenager, and a game we say we love
Last Sunday, a teenager I have been seeing in my practice umpired an Under-15 grand final. A contentious free kick and a 25-metre penalty in the final 30 seconds put a player on the mark after the siren. That is football. Decisions get made, some are wrong, and 14-year-olds learn to live with them.
What happened next is not football. As he walked off, roughly 15 parents from the losing side formed a corridor and let him have it. "Disgrace." "Cheat." Words I won't print. He is 18. Most of the umpires in his league are younger than that. Many are 14 or 15, the same age as the players they officiate.
He told me the words didn't do the damage. The number of adults did. "I was fine on the ground," he said. "It hit me that night, when the adrenaline wore off." That is a textbook description of how threat works in a young brain: the danger passes, the body catches up later, and the sleep goes first.
He also told me it happens every single week. Not the grand final scale, but something. A team manager telling him she hoped he'd "never umpire again." A coach asking whether he was "paid by the other side." Spectators diagnosing bias from the fence. He earns about $50 a game for the privilege, and volunteers on Monday nights teaching first-year umpires how to survive it.
He is not quitting. Plenty do. Research from the University of South Australia found that one in five community umpires reported verbal abuse every single game, and one in five had experienced some form of physical abuse, from having their personal space invaded to being pushed or punched. Almost half copped abuse at least every couple of games. The AFL knows this. Leagues have been "putting clubs on notice" and launching respect campaigns for years, and my young client's Sunday suggests the campaigns are not reaching the car park.
Why teenagers are not small adults in stripes
I have spent 40 years working with adolescents, and here is what the league needs to understand. The adolescent brain is exquisitely tuned to social threats. It over-detects criticism, over-remembers humiliation, and takes far longer than an adult brain to file the experience away as "just one bad afternoon." A 40-year-old umpire hears "you're a joke" and thinks that bloke's had a few. A 15-year-old hears it from 15 grown men and women and thinks they might be right.
Now add what the AFL never says out loud: a junior umpire under 18 is a child. Not a contractor, not a match official, a child, working in an environment the league created, paid by the league, wearing the league's shirt. Under Victoria's Child Safe Standards, sporting bodies have a positive duty to protect children in their care from harm. I struggle to see how a corridor of shouting adults meets that standard, or how "we'll refer it to the club president" discharges it.
Five reforms that would actually work
I am not asking for anything the league cannot afford. I am asking it to treat the abuse of children as seriously as it treats an illegal tackle.
1. Fix the escort system. Junior umpires are supposed to be walked off the ground by a volunteer parent from each club. My client's experience is that escorts get no training, no instructions, and frequently don't turn up, which is how 15 parents got within arm's reach of him. Escorts should be mandatory, identified, briefed in five minutes before the match, and accountable. If an umpire is abused walking off and no escort was present, the home club forfeits points. Watch how fast the roster fills.
2. Make the age visible. Several leagues already put junior umpires in a distinct-coloured shirt. Mandate it, and print the message on the back: "I am under 18." It will not stop everyone. It will stop some, and it removes the excuse that "we didn't realise."
3. Automatic, league-wide bans for adults. A parent who abuses a junior umpire should be banned from all grounds in the league for the rest of the season, first offence, with the ban recognised across every affiliated competition in the state. No committee meeting, no club-level discretion. Clubs that shield offending parents lose premiership points. Currently, the sanction for screaming at a child is a possible ban next season, if someone senior happened to be watching.
4. Silent-sideline rounds are not enough. Make quiet the default. The AFL trialled a "sit down round" in Gippsland; officials stood up anyway. Junior football does not need a novelty round. It needs a standing rule that spectators at under-age matches stay behind the fence, seated, and that anything directed at an umpire beyond applause is reportable. Junior soccer has run silent sidelines for years without the game collapsing.
5. A duty-of-care pathway for the kids. When a junior umpire is abused, someone from the league should call them that evening, not a form, a phone call, and check they are okay. Umpire associations should have a referral pathway to a psychologist, funded by the league, exactly as players do for concussion. The AFL found the money for a mental-health program for elite players. It can find it for the 15-year-olds holding the community game together.
The part that matters
Every one of these reforms could be in place by Round 1 next year. None requires a rule change to the game itself. What they require is for AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon and the people who run umpiring to say, plainly, that a junior umpire is a child in the league's care, and that abusing one is child abuse, not passion.
My client is going back next season. He has done nothing wrong, and he has more courage than the 15 adults who walked past him on Sunday. The question is whether the game he loves deserves him.
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg AO is a child and adolescent psychologist. The young umpire described has consented to his experience being shared; identifying details have been changed.