How St Pats organises umpiring and why

 

The following information has been provided for the information of members, managers and umpires. It explains how we set up the allocation of umpiring commitments across the club, why and what we hope to achieve as a club. 

 

At St Pats umpiring is a share responsibility. All our members - even those with no interest in picking up the whistle - are expected to assist St Pats filfill their umpiring responsibilities and support those that do umpire.  

 

Historically at St Pats, all umpiring commitments were the responsibility of teams - each team was allocated around 15-18 commitments a season to fill by either finding umpires or allocating a game to each player. This was easy to administer from a club point of view because the burden for finding umpires became the responsibility of teams  and managers. But it also meant that sometimes people were umpiring well above their ability and confidence level, which contributed to umpire abuse, player frustration and people refusing to umpire. It also did very little to inspire people to try umpiring and meant the Club was doing very little to 'develop' umpires. 

 

The culture of paying umpires has shifted a bit and the Club decided that umpires should be paid for their service, in a manner that is affordable and reasonable.

 

Despite paying umpires a reasonable amount at the club and HACT level, we currently need more umpires in the ACT and at St Pats. Paying umpires does not solve the problem - the issue is that not enough people want to commit to umpiring. If someone said they would pay me $100 to umpire a game I still would likely not do it. I think most people have a similar view. So we need to make umpiring more appealing - and continue to pay them a reasonable and fair amount. 

 

Umpire dropout is also an issue. In 2025 HACT lost roughly a third of umpires, in part to umpire abuse. 

 

Post covid and for a couple of years, our Umpire Coordinators were allocating umpires for all club commitments. Big job! They needed to find enough umpires within the club to fill roughly 250-300 per year. This involved finding umpires, assessing their ability, allocating them to games, managing their availability and communicating with them. Our Umpire Coordinator also needed to cover umpires when they became unavailable and ensure they got paid correctly by the Club. These responsibilities usually fell to one individual (the Umpire Coordinator), and they found their role stressful and demanding - as result our Umpire Coordinators suffered a lot of burn out, only lasted a season (just!) and did not return. Workload continues to be an issue despite efforts to share the load. 

 

Given the demands of the role we struggled to recruit Umpire Coordinators and for several years did not have one. When this occured the responsibilities fell to the Coordinators who were already very, very busy. 

 

So the Club then looked to a different model, that would -

• ensure that fulfilling umpiring commitments was shared across the club and did not fall to one or two people

• engage club umpires so they can umpire consistently at an appropriate level and develop as umpires

• provide guidance and support to both established and new club umpires

• create a more balanced approach to umpire allocations that shares the load across the club - as such teams are allocated some commitments but hopefully not too many

• ensure all umpires are paid during the season and make this manageable for managers and the Treasurer

• ensure that budgeting for umpiring was managed by the club and that the payment of umpiring occurred during the season

• provide support to managers that oversee their team umpiring commitments - e.g. relevant umpire info + contact details are provided as well as guidance on the processes that need to be followed by managers. Our Umpire Coordinator is also available to provide assistance. 

• promote opportunity for members to actively and meaningfully volunteer for the club by umpiring without being paid. It is important we encourage this because we are a club run by volunteers. 

 

With our current umpire coordinator a model that achieves most of this was rolled out last year - 2025. There is a reasonable amount of admin and process in place but we have tried to simplify and communicate with managers in regard to using relevant spreadsheets, etc. 

 

Our Umpire Coordinator is also available for assistance - if anyone needs clarification and extra guidance. But they will not find umpires for managers - this cannot fall back on their shoulders given they finds umpires for the commitments not allocated to teams. 

 

This system is not perfect but it does ensyre that the responsibilities relating to umpiring is shared across the club and is more manageable. 

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If you have a question or would you like to umpire please reach out to our Umpire Coordinator - they would LOVE to hear from you. Please email umpiring@stpatrickshockey.com.au.