Booney wrote:Flinders Park at home this week? The ground is almost grass less at the moment, basically all mud and looks almost unplayable from what I see on my way past each morning.

The worst I've seen it in my 20 years associated with the club.

mighty hounds wrote:

Reilly wrote:Definitely at Thebby. Read FP's facebook post. They posted it about 35 minutes ago.

Are you a player Reilly?

Footy a long time ago! I'm still around the place a fair bit.

Now that our game against PH a few weeks back has been sorted by the association I can go into some more details:

The incident itself went like this. One of our batsmen played and missed at a ball. A few of the fielders got stuck into him about his shot (fair play as it was pretty awful). Keeper threw the ball to short cover and at this stage the non striker walked down the wicket to tell him to put the crap shots away. While this was happening short cover ran to the non strikers end and dislodged the bails. A few of their players appealed and our umpire quickly gave it not out as it's a dead ball as soon as the keeper throws the ball to another player and the batters aren't attempting to run. From there the players surrounded the umpire and things started to get nasty. It's very lucky we had the team 'hippie' umpiring who's the most relaxed bloke in the side. If it'd been other blokes I think things would have got out of hand very quickly. Our umpire was abused, and grabbed by one of their players. Our captain went out to try and sort things out and calm them down but was told to f*ck off. It was at this stage they decided to walk off the field. Prior to this incident while they were batting their umpires gave three of their batsmen not out to very plum LBW appeals (I can take that, as we don't have umpires) but they also gave a batsmen a reprieve when he was caught out. It was a full toss, caught at cover. Batsmen then turned around to his mate at square leg and told him surely that's a no ball at which stage he signalled 'no-ball'. I'm thankful we don't have to play them again and in my opinion they should have an umpire every week. However, justice has been served and the league has dealt with the issue. Just wanted to tell everyone exactly what happened.

As a PH player, I am very disappointed to hear this. The team in question I believe is our LO1 team which have come over from another club to play under our banner this season. Unfortunately, these guys are very rarely sited on training nights but I am sure that the club will take a very strong approach with this issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.
What was the punishment by the Association?

G'day Harry,

Yes we were aware they were a new addition to your club as some of the boys had played against some of the players in question when they played for ICC. Personally, I've played against PH many times over the years and never had an issue. I think that's the sad part about all this in that obviously if there is an incident in a game it reflects badly on the club. Really it was only 4 - 6 of their guys that were the issue. The rest stayed out of it and were fine. The league awarded us the win, docked PH 2 points and suspended the captain for two games for not controlling his players and for walking off. As far as we're concerned the issue has been dealt with and I hope the penalty means a similar issue doesn't come up again for other teams. It's LO's not A grade.

This is actually a great topic.

Copping some great sprays is part of footy, hopefully most laugh it off if it doesn't cross racial/family lines.

Some of the best ones came at me at PNU, Salisbury North, CBC and Eastern Park from memory.

As an umpire I've copped a few decent ones too, then I look over and it's some dude sitting on about 120kgs with a beer in one hand and a pie in the other, it makes it bloody easy.

I've never minded a bit of banter from the players too, it's to and fro and I've never sent anyone off from it, I'm quick witted and good with a return payout.

A personal favourite of mine came after I paid a downfield free against a bloke that I had told a few times to stop with the late shit. A voice from behind me said "You're f****** shit umpire" I turned around and looked at who I thought said it and replied with "Yeah, and your two kicks have gone straight to the opposition".

He then replied "No worries, you're not far wrong" as a few of them had a chuckle, given it was midway through the 3rd it held extra merit, we had a laugh over a beer afterwards.

Craig Taylor and Justin Cicolella had strong banter, both exceptional players and were never short with giving advice.

My favourite when I used to umpire when a player was having a whinge was to tell them to worry about getting a kick as I'd had more of it than them! That tended to get a laugh and generally shut them up for a bit.