Please talk over the proposition below within your Club and report feedback to the Secretary of CHA, Debbie Barr.

Umpire Shortages
A Discussion Paper presented to CHA open meeting 16.10.2006.


Does this sound familiar to you?
· The person responsible for arranging umpires in your Club spends hours
each week calling every umpire in the book to get someone for your games?
· Those of you lucky to have a regular Club Umpire have a real problem when
that person isn’t available.
· Those teams receiving CHA appointments struggle to cover games when CHA
have nobody available.
· You put up with poor umpiring, because league points are at stake, just
happy that somebody is there with a whistle.
· You won’t take up Umpiring yourself because you’ll end up umpiring every
week because nobody else is qualified and you want to play.
· You know that two good umpires on a game means that everyone will enjoy
their game so much more but that just isn’t going to happen.
· Poor umpiring results in inevitable criticism from players. This puts off
Umpires who give up before they can improve.
· Clubs are already stretched and Umpiring is on the back burner.

It’s easy to see that a severe Umpire shortage problem exists. It’s been a problem for years and it’s nationwide. Do we want to do something about it or do we just struggle along with things the way they are??
The easy way out is to do nothing and put up with it! There is no quick fix but a solution does exist.