Don White to umpire his 1200th game in Latrobe Valley

So he will pack his bag in the familiar way – always “from the bottom up” – and head off to Bates Reserve in Yallourn to officiate the Mid Gippsland Football League game between Yallourn Yallourn North and Boolarra with that sense of trepidation, as well as excitement.

"Let's hope it's not too bloody cold,'' he said.

White is in his early 60s – he won’t say precisely how old – and umpires lower grades and juniors nowadays as well as mentoring younger members of the league's umpires’ association. But he made a special request to be elevated to the seniors this weekend, and with good reason. It is not every day that you officiate your 1200th game.

It is an astonishing figure, accumulated over four decades of umpiring up to three games a weekend – juniors and seniors – through the winter since 1976. It is a record for the league by a figure of several hundred games.

“Everyone’s had something to do with him here,” said Latrobe Valley Umpires Association secretary Dan Swallow.

“They’ve all got a Don story and it’s often a drinking story.’’

White knows that he will cop plenty of flak out on the field for there are no beg-pardons for the man in white. It is an occupational hazard that he has long since brushed off.

“I don’t think I’ve ever umpired a game where I wasn’t abused,” he says, adding that he is not short of advice for AFL umpires when he watches his beloved Western Bulldogs.

“When I go to a Melbourne game, I abuse them too!” he said.

“I enjoy it. I'll say to the people on the fence: 'Thanks for paying your money to come and see me!'

“It's only banter.”

White played some junior football in his home town Traralgon before he stepped away and took up the whistle.

“I was too light,’’ he said. “I had asthma and I didn’t grow.’’

The umpiring bug bit him quickly, and he progressed through to senior Latrobe Valley level, eventually officiating in games that featured future stars of the game such as Bob Murphy, Jarryd Roughead, Brian Royal and Steve Wallis. His work shifts at the Loy Yang power plant, where he was an operator for AGL, helped him fit in the umpiring.

Passion, fitness and commitment are the key elements to his longevity, he says. White is an old-school umpire; one of the biggest traits of a poor umpire, he says, is "small man's syndrome", the bane of the umpire-haters in the world of footy.

But if someone abuses him, he always has a rejoinder.

"A bloke yelled over the fence the other week as a player was kicking for goal, 'Aren't you supposed to line him up?' And I just said: 'I'm too bloody old to be lining him up!' It was a 100-point margin anyway. And they were laughing their heads off.''

Many times he has launched into a bet with a player preparing to kick for goal late in a one-sided game, just for interest's sake. It's a pot of beer on the line, either way. "I tell the bloke on the mark to jump higher!'' he says.

The Joel Selwood shrug has not made it to the Latrobe Valley ("They're not smart enough here"), but it is holding-the-ball and high-contact decisions that are the toughest to call, he says. Although the hardest decision for an umpire is deeper, he adds: ''Walking across the line.''

Only once did he ponder quitting, and it was long ago when he was a young man. That afternoon he was attacked and almost strangled by a player who then ran off the field, removing his jumper so that he could not be reported.  He despises talking in negatives, but he acknowledges that the incident and the aftermath shook his faith.

“I nearly finished,'' he said. "But not many people would remember it, so I don't bring it up. It took a long time, and I was only young, and in the end they got him."

The player took some tracking down but was eventually suspended for life. After a period, White returned. "The umpires came out home and dragged me back,'' he said.

The recent spate of cases of touching the umpire in the AFL bemused him because they were so low-key by comparison with what he has seen, but he adds that there is a line to be drawn.

"You've got to protect umpires," he said. "And that includes the escorts who take them on and off. They [AFL] have got to be seen to do something.''

White has no plans of retirement yet, although he knows that his speed has left him so that nowadays, he has to use his nous to run the correct lines. This will be his last senior game.

Goal umpiring as a fill-in a few weeks ago, his advisor told him that he was not fit enough, so a couple of days later, he went for a long run. He still trains twice a week and umpires on both days of the weekend.

"I'm not sure if I was selfish about my family but I always brought a bag of lollies home for my two girls,'' he says. "I love it. I just love it. It makes you a better person in society, I reckon.

"I'd like to keep helping the kids. While I can do it, why lay down and put my toes up in the air? If I can contribute to the game I'll do it because I don't know if I'll get sick. I'm not fussed. It's just a number.

"I'm so lucky that I've been able to get there. With whatever we go through, some of my mates have died and that."