You can’t miss Margaret!

Margaret Paul is the name behind the fluoro green boundary umpires shirt and the fluoro pink joggers. But just what is the “MP” story....

Margaret is a 20 something ABC journalist, and at the end of her cadetship with the ABC in Melbourne, her boss advised she would be off to Broken Hill.

"I am from the inner north Melbourne, the home of the Fitzroy Lions FC. Whilst not old enough to have gone to games I do remember the rallies that were held at the Brunswick Street Oval when the Club was sent north to Brisbane.  Last year my brother co captained Fitzroy in the under 18’s league. It was ten years after the club folded, but it was pretty special to hear them all singing “we are the boys from old Fitzroy” at the top of their voices".

"I grew up doing lots of gymnastics and playing a lot of netball. I’m a qualified gymnastics coach and worked as a coach whilst I was at Uni. I can still do a pretty mean handstand! I started surfing last summer.....but don’t get much chance these days"!

I had two knee reconstructions, one on each knee, both through netball, hence my retirement!

I was very jealous of all the women playing women’s AFL, but did not want to risk a third knee reconstruction, so I decided to give “backwards running” a try!

I am really enjoying my role as a boundary umpire. You get to watch the game close up and I love running.  The old fella George Lewis has been my tutor teaching me the correct techniques etc to throw the ball in. I got heckled for the first time on the weekend, which was pretty exciting. The ball rolled out of bounds, but someone on the bench yelled it was “out on the full, you (expletive deleted)”. I felt like I was part of the umpiring fraternity then.

I got to toss the coin last week for my first A grade game which was pretty special. There was a lot more running involved, which I liked. It’s a very fast game in the A grade!

I’m so excited to be heading down to Adelaide on August 5^th to be a boundary umpire in the Women’s REP game.  My Brother will be coming over from Melbourne, mostly to watch his bombers take on the crows afterwards, but I feel it’s partly as a nod of recognition for all his under 18’s games I went along to. He’ll probably heckle me, which is also fair enough.