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Umpire Di Phyland Reaches Memorable 1300-Game Milestone

By JULIA MONTESANO


WHEN Di Phyland walked through the doors at the EDFLUA in 1991, she had no idea that she would be umpiring her 1300th game 27 years later.

Phyland achieved the feat in the Women’s AFL Masters league, where she officiated the match between Werribee and Coburg last week.

Starting off in the EDFL, Phyland was initially a boundary umpire as her shift work prohibited her from attending regular training.

But this didn’t bother the budding umpire, who admits she immediately fell in love with umpiring after her first game on the boundary.

“My coach said ‘well if you can’t make training, you’re going to run the boundary on Saturday’, and after my first game, that was it,” Phyland told essendondfl.com.au.

“I said to the coach after the game, ‘do you need me to run again next week?’ and he was like ‘well, if you could run every week that would be great’ and I was like beauty, this is awesome. It just hooked me.”

But after witnessing the treatment that women received in suburban football circles, Phyland transitioned from boundary to field as she wanted to give the players the on-field respect that they deserved.

“I felt and a lot of the players felt that not all, but a number of the guys who were umpiring were just there to get their 30 or 40 bucks cash and they didn’t take women’s football seriously,” Phyland said.

“Our skill level wasn’t what they get umpiring senior men’s but the passion was incredible for the game and it still is.

“You’ve only got to watch AFLW and you’ll see the passion.

“We had that sort of passion but we felt a lot of the time that the blokes just, they didn’t see the passion, all they saw was some quick cash in hand and out the door at the end of the game.”

Now with women’s football booming across the state, Phyland couldn’t be happier, as she has been involved in the progression of the game since the early 1990s.

She has been particularly impressed with the amount of female umpires in football leagues nationwide, after she was one of the only ones in her first years of umpiring.

“When I started here at the EDFL, there were two of us, both of us were boundary umpires,” Phyland said.

“Then for a number of years there was only me.

“Then there was three of us and then suddenly there was six of us.

“By the late 90s, numbers had started to grow, we’d started to get young girls involved in field umpiring and we had a lot of daughters and sisters come along and get involved with boundary umpiring, and a number of them transitioned into field over the years.

“The numbers that we’ve got now, when I started, I would never have dreamed that not only would the association have the numbers that it’s got, but that so many of them, such a large percentage, would be female.

“It’s awesome and it’s absolutely brilliant.”

After 1300 games of umpiring, Phyland continues to be a role model for all young female umpires in the EDFL.

While she admits that she has achieved a remarkable milestone, there is one certain number that she is eyeing off.

“It’d be nice to hit 2000,” Phyland said.

“Jimmy Ainsworth (EDFL goal umpire) has gotten there.

“I’ve got to try and beat Jimmy at something!”

EDFL Partners