LW: Dean, when did you first consider the umpiring caper could be the path for you?

DG: After I did a few years on the boundary I started doing under-10 footy as a central in Doncaster and my umpire coach, John Edwards, pulled me aside fairly early and said ‘you go pretty good at this and you should take the next step’, so he really pushed me from a young age.

“During my adolescence I started to put on a bit of a weight, so I turned my focus to fitness, joined an athletics club in Doncaster, got really fit and from there, umpiring took over my life and I’ve always given it 110 per cent.”

Sounds like you took to umpiring like a duck to water. Why were you able to pick it up so quickly?

“It’s in the genes I suppose. My dad (Don) was an umpire, I was a Fitzroy supporter and he’d take us to every Fitzroy game.

“We’d get there at quarter-time of the seconds and being an ex-umpire, he’d always be very interested to see who was umpiring the seniors.

“He was good friends with guys like Glenn James, Bill Deller, Ian Robinson and a few others, so we were introduced to the umpires from a fairly early age.

“At the footy I’d be watching Fitzroy, but I’d also be watching the umpires.

“I remember we beat Collingwood one day at Victoria Park and Glenn James paid a really controversial free kick against Ricky Barham for an illegal shepherd, which cost Collingwood the game.

“From that moment I thought of Glenn James as my favourite umpire, and later he was one of my first coaches when I made the AFL Development Squad.”

When I was a  young bloke I had posters of Tim Watson, Simon Madden and James Hird on my bedroom walls. Sounds like you might have had some umpires on yours.

“Not quite… I was a passionate Fitzroy supporter, but I remember I really liked Rowan Sawers as an umpire, as well as David Howlett and Glenn James, who was a bit of a trend-setter being indigenous.”

I was a Bryan Sheehan fan myself.

“Bryan was a sensational umpire and I actually got the chance to umpire a few games with Bryan in practice matches.”

How old were you when you first umpired men and how daunting was that initially?

“I was 16 and it was in the Eastern Suburban Churches League and it was certainly a learning curve.

“Being a 16 year-old, I was probably lacking a bit of maturity, so I had some pretty big lessons in life out on the footy field in how to deal with men.

“It would be fair to say when I was 16 and 17 I’d get in a bit of strife for swearing back at players, so I had to learn to hold my tongue, keep my mouth shut and just umpire the game.

“I remember doing a game at Springvale South, and the coach knew how to get under my skin and use to give me a really hard time.

“There were times like that when you just wanted to walk off the ground, but each game you learned from it and that’s what I’m trying to teach our younger umpires (Goodridge is the Bendigo Umpires Association director of coaching) to use it as a learning experience each time.”

I’m sure you’ve heard it all from over the fence in terms of umpire abuse. How difficult has that been to cope with over the journey?

“The worst is when your name gets called out. Normally, you can just cop it, but when it becomes a personal attack is when it becomes hard.

“But you’ve just got to try to ignore it and block it out, which I tend to do really well.”

Has it ever been bad enough to almost drive you away from the game?

“When I was 16, 17, 18, I was umpiring some fairly tough footy… I remember umpiring a game at Dandenong South, who were copping a flogging and midway through the last quarter someone said we know you car, the number plates are IQE224 and don’t expect to have your tyres on it after the game.

“The siren sounded, I got my car keys and got straight out of there, so there were times in that period of my life when I might have had enough, but in the past 20 years that hasn’t been the case.”

What’s the key ingredients to being a good umpire?

“Consistency in terms of your performance and just trying to continually hit around that 80 per cent accuracy mark in terms of your decision making and minimising your errors.

“It’s about getting in good decision-making positions, but it’s also important to always reflect on your games and certainly, now the vision we have from Bendigo league games is fantastic.”

We see players get down on themselves when they make a mistake. How is it for umpires when they make errors during a game and the effect it has on their confidence?

“If you have a period of say, five minutes, of missing a couple of decisions it can certainly get mental in your head.

“I remember in round one I missed a sling tackle on Eaglehawk’s Brodie Collins, who ended up being hospitalised. I saw the vision of it afterwards and felt pretty sick about it, so when you miss one like that, it’s worse than paying an unwarranted one.”

You mentioned earlier about being part of the AFL Umpires Development Squad. Can you take us back to that experience, in particularly AFL grand final day 1994 when you officiated the reserves match between North Melbourne and Footscray.

“That was a great day. I remember there was only a point in it at three quarter-time and North Melbourne ended up getting over the line.

“That was a really big year in 1994 because I had also done the Teal Cup grand final in Western Australia between New South Wales and Victoria.

“And then in 1995 I did an Ansett Cup match between Carlton and St Kilda out at Waverley, which St Kilda won by one point after Carlton kicked the first seven goals of the match and it looked all over at quarter-time.

“I had a look at some footage of that game on Youtube the other night… Nicky Winmar, Stephen Kernahan, Stephen Silvagni, Justin Maddern, Robert Harvey and Nathan Burke were all playing in that game and it was just a great experience and definitely the highlight of my career, even just being a pre-season match.”

It sounds like you can’t have been too far off earning a place on the AFL Umpires Senior Panel around that time.

“I was ranked No.1 outside of the AFL panel and everything was going really well after doing that game out at Waverely.

“Glenn James observed me that night and I had one free kick error for the match, but I got a phonecall on the Labour Day weekend from the AFL umpires coach David Levens saying I hadn’t made it. I was shattered and the reason given was it was the height of my bouncing.

“I wasn’t the best bouncer, but I always prided myself on being a really good decision-maker, but it was back at the time when they were really focusing on bouncing.

“I wasn’t the only one to get the chop because of bouncing, but it was fairly tough at the time because I believe you hang your hat on your decision making.

“Bouncing for me after that got really psychological.”

It’s certainly a tough skill to master. I’ve tried it and often copped a footy straight back on the nose. What’s the secret?

“Don’t think about it too much, and if you do a poor one, just put it aside and focus on the next one, don’t let it get you down.”

Lastly, is the game easier or harder to umpire now compared to when your first started out during the ’80s.

“I reckon it’s easier. The game has cleaned itself up a lot and the stuff that goes on behind the play is nowhere near what it was 20, 30 years ago.

“It’s more free-flowing and even though there’s a lot of different rules that can make it confusing, the actual game itself has opened right up.”

Goodridge will officiate his 1000^th match in the Eaglehawk v Golden Square senior game at Canterbury Park on Saturday.