FOOTBALL umpire Daryl Davey has one of the most unenviable jobs in south-west football, but it’s one he does with pride and a steely determination.
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The respected whistleblower is Warrnambool Football Umpires Association’s umpire advocate.
It’s a job which means he has to play the bad guy at tribunal hearings, doing what he can to ensure an umpire’s reasons for laying a report are clear and convincing.
“You don’t draw great pleasure from it, you don’t go away from it thinking there’s cause for celebration because a player got a guilty verdict or a suspension,” he said. “But it’s just knowing that was a job well done.
“There’s accountability for players, there are boundaries about what they can and can’t do and there are things in place so they do the right thing.”
Davey, 42, will umpire his 300th match as a WFUA whistleblower today when he takes charge of Allansford and Kolora-Noorat at Allansford Recreation Reserve.
His career started when he was a university student at Bendigo.
A developing teaching career took him to Sydney before he scored at job at King’s College, Warrnambool, where he’s been since 1996.
“I started umpiring when I was at uni just to earn a bit of pocket money and run and get fit,” he said.
His career highlight came in 2010 when he umpired the WDFNL grand final between Kolora-Noorat and Dennington.
Other fond memories came interstate. He controlled a match at the SCG when Assumption College played a Sydney league representative team and had interleague duties at Coffs Harbour on another occasion.
Davey said he enjoyed the “club atmosphere” of the WFUA and was proud his eldest daughter had followed in his footsteps running the boundary.
He said he had a genuine love of being out on the ground with a whistle in hand.
“If I didn’t love it, if I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t commit all that time to training, all that time on Saturdays,” he said.
“One of the real highlights of umpiring, sometimes you will see a goal of the day right in front of your face and you wouldn’t see that on the other side of the fence.”
