Razor Ray, The real Interview

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Geoffa32

Geoffa32

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Aug 17, 2007
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http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/sport/afl/story/0,26547,23853717-5016212,00.html

AFTER a 40-minute interview with Ray Chamberlain, curiosity got the better of the waitress when it came time for the bill. As Chamberlain disappeared across the road, she politely asked his identity and was taken aback to learn he was an AFL umpire.

"We thought he was a comedian," she said.

Whether it was a case of mistaken identity or she heard Chamberlain describing himself as a midget or circus clown, she could be forgiven for thinking "Razor Ray" had a different vocation.

It took abut 60 seconds to confirm his confession that he is a bit different to most umpires, and when he becomes animated, it's a bit like listening to Steve Irwin.

Crikey, you could nearly imagine Chamberlain wrestling a crocodile.

This is the bloke who once said people thought the dingo had taken the wrong Chamberlain.

Related LinksFairer sex?: Women can ump says Ray
Apparently the remark didn't offend and his future brothers-in-law, top rugby league players Joel Monaghan (Canberra Raiders) and Michael Monaghan (England's Warrington Wolves), reckon it's the only funny thing he's said in the 10 years they've known him.

Although not everyone loves Raymond, he is developing a cult following - but it has its drawbacks.

His fiancee Monique, whom he will marry in October, no longer goes to any of his games because she can't cope with the abuse dished out to the umpires, particularly her man.

"The hardest thing for her and my parents is that they take it personally and what I try to say to them is that they don't know you personally so how can you take it personally?" Chamberlain explained.

"People don't know you or what you care about."

Carlton supporters didn't show him any love in Round 6 at the MCG when he awarded that controversial double goal against Jarrad Waite for time-wasting after the Blues defender punched the ball into the crowd following an Adelaide goal.

While Chamberlain wanted the ball back and the crowd wanted his head, his colleagues rewarded him with the prized yellow jersey for the week, the equivalent of what the Tour de France leader wears.

At 170cm, he might lack height but he doesn't lack confidence. Asked if he had made the right call on Waite, he said: "I know I did.

"With that one, I actually had nowhere to go. If you don't pay a free for that one, what do you pay a free for?

"It wasn't like he just put his hand up and it skimmed off and went two rows back, he knocked it into the second tier of the 'G.

"If you watch it, there was a bit of a delay because it's going through my head, how am I going to handle this? The law is the law. We pay free kicks. Get over it. That's the role."

Each week the umpires award the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) to an umpire who may not necessarily have had the best game but has been working on an area of weakness or has done a community act.

"Probably the most rewarding thing for me over the past two years was that after the Jarrad Waite free kick I copped a bit of attention and then your peers unanimously vote for you," Chamberlain said.

"They say you had to pay that because that's the law and that's what I value most."

Chamberlain said umpires have their own awards because no one is going to give them a plasma television for kicking the goal of the day or will say, "That was a good bounce, Ray. Here's a TV or the Jason Tough Guy Award or whatever".

And he doesn't care about people saying he's taken over the mantle from the recently retired Darren Goldspink as the most disliked umpire.

Instead, he said he would be happy to achieve half of what "Goldy" did during his career.

It was almost by accident that Chamberlain played Aussie rules and later became an umpire in Canberra, where his family had a strong background in rugby league.

Rather than enrol him in league, his mother signed him up for Aussie rules, much to the horror of his father, who saw four posts rather than two when he turned up for young Ray's first game.

The family soon became heavily involved in Aussie rules.

As for the umpiring, Chamberlain was lured into the job as a teenager when, with no experience, he lobbed at one of his brother Brian's under-14 games and was offered a free tank of petrol to umpire the game because the official umpire hadn't fronted.

From Canberra he went to Sydney and then Melbourne to pursue a career in the VFL, where he umpired the 2003 reserves grand final, before finally getting a spot on the AFL list.

A former physical education teacher, Chamberlain is now a finance broker and said he had had to change jobs to continue at the elite level.

He can not see umpires going full-time because a lot of them do not start at the elite level until they are in their 20s and their time in the game is too short.

A lot of them are highly educated, on big bucks and, unless they were paid what Chamberlain described as "truck loads of money", they would never umpire full-time.

"There are guys earning over 200 large doing their own things and then you say, 'Well, you have to do this full-time and we are going to pay you $120,000 a year'. They wouldn't do it." he said.

Zero tolerance is one of the umpires' trademarks.

"I'll put it this way. I'm out there undertaking a role and doing a job," Chamberlain said.

"'I am not allowed to turn around and say to someone else, 'Oh, you shanked that out on the full, you missed that target or you turned that over or you ducked your head when you backed back into that contest'.

"No one wants to hear that from me and I have no right to say that."

Chamberlain said players were "awesome" in the way they handled themselves, but umpires were not prepared to cop it from them.

"You get one vote in a federal election and so do I - we are not different and just because historically it might have been OK, it ain't OK any more," he said

"Sometimes when you are dealing with fired-up, aggressive, combative athletes, subtlety doesn't always get the outcome you require."

He admitted having umpires wired for sound was outstanding for coaching, but found it distracting when he is at home watching games, so he turns the TV sound off.

"It always puts a stranglehold on the way we communicate and we have to articulate what is going on out there in a certain way because it is going across in TV rooms," he said.

Chamberlain admitted it was confronting that the umpires were wired up.

He said it wouldn't happen in the world of finance.

"But it's a different industry," he said.

"I've got no doubt there is a little guy sitting in there turning on the knobs as to who (which umpire) we listen to and who we don't.

"I'm painfully aware that everything I say and do and sneeze and vomit and whatever, gets turned up.

"I think it would be advantageous for me and some others if it didn't go over the air because it's one less thing you have to worry about, but at the end of the day, if we are doing our job properly, it won't matter."

Despite calls to ban the bounce, Chamberlain wants it to stay and said umpires who couldn't perform the task to the expected level had to move on.

He said it was like anyone who could not achieve a component of their job.

Chamberlain is listed at 65kg and his jockey-like frame has been the target of several jokes from Port ruckman Dean Brogan and Sydney's Darren Jolly, who have advised him to get into the weights room so he can add more muscle to bounce the ball higher.

He enjoys the friendly banter with players and said it was important to call them by name, although he admitted to being mortified when he mistakenly called St Kilda's Matt Maguire "Moose", instead of his nickname, "Goose".

"I had an interesting conversation with Lance Franklin in a pre-season game," Chamberlain said.

"He was shouting out to me, 'Razor, Razor, Razor'. I turned around to him and said, 'Buddy Love, are we on nickname basis or what?'

"He laughed. He thought he was being held, but that's all fine."

The difference between being perceived as arrogant rather than cocksure is not lost on Chamberlain, who says he has taken notice of what he has been told to say to players when awarding a free kick.

"The analogy I was given by the coach was when you are going through the drive-through takeaway and you order a Big Mac and you're asked if you want fries, you say 'no'," he said.

"Say what you need to say and leave the fries and leave the up-sizing of the Coke alone. As an umpire you need to say, 'I paid this and that's why and that's the end of it'."
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He certainly is different.....

I was at the Carlton game discussed here and did notice the look on his face just before paying it. I knew the free was coming and that it would be a hard call to make. But a rule is a rule.
 

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dmc333 said:
Why do we need to know about Ray Chamberlain?

Shouldn't know his name, the bloke should be anonymous.
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doodlefeatures said:
So this is the kind of rubbish that ends up in the paper when none of the players have been out for a few beers? ffs, who gives a flying about this pratt
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Get over yourselves. The guy's an egotistical runt but it was an interesting read.
 
So most of you guys are saying giving an AFL umpire an interview is a stupid thing to do because they do a job that most supporters hate ?
 
The interview just highlighted that he loves to pluck obscure free kicks from out of his arse. They really have no idea what people and players want these muppets.
 

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:( this joker is on a fantasy trip. the way he overacts in his bouncing motion and then backs out like a frightened little mouse proves that his mind is on only on himself not the game. he is not alone in bringing our game into farcical times. by having 3 umpires, jokers like him surface. get rid of the 3rd umpire , it hasnt improved the umpiring, then jokers like him would not appear as much.
 
razorbbb said:
:( this joker is on a fantasy trip. the way he overacts in his bouncing motion and then backs out like a frightened little mouse proves that his mind is on only on himself not the game. he is not alone in bringing our game into farcical times. by having 3 umpires, jokers like him surface. get rid of the 3rd umpire , it hasnt improved the umpiring, then jokers like him would not appear as much.
Click to expand...

Shows how little you know about umpiring.
Do you honestly think there would only be the 5.1 errors per match on average as there is currently if there was only 2 umpires? I don't think so. Do you think it would be physically possible for two umpires to keep up with the pace of the game in this day and age? I don't think so.

Overacts his bouncing motion? A bouncing motion is a set routine that you grow up with over your years of umpiring, just like goal kicking...you do what is comfortable and works for you in the past. It's got nothing to do with over-emphasising it just because "his mind is only on himself".

You clearly have no idea.
 
I think what annoys people is the ballet poses in holding the ball and the "look at me" type of actions. You look at umpiring 10 years ago and they didn't do that. The quality of umpiring was still the same but there has been this "self importance" that has crept into the umpiring fraternity. Not all of them are like that though. Just a few. Razor is one. You could see how frustrating it must be to players and how hard it is for them to keep their mouths shut when a few umpires are consistently yabbering and posing.
 
the good maggot said:
Shows how little you know about umpiring.
Do you honestly think there would only be the 5.1 errors per match on average as there is currently if there was only 2 umpires? I don't think so. Do you think it would be physically possible for two umpires to keep up with the pace of the game in this day and age? I don't think so.

Overacts his bouncing motion? A bouncing motion is a set routine that you grow up with over your years of umpiring, just like goal kicking...you do what is comfortable and works for you in the past. It's got nothing to do with over-emphasising it just because "his mind is only on himself".

You clearly have no idea.
Click to expand...
dont ever compare bouncing the ball with goalkicking. no one gives a hoot about what umpires are suppose to do properly without wanting brownlow votes. just do your job correctly &shut up.
 
the good maggot said:
A bouncing motion is a set routine that you grow up with over your years of umpiring, just like goal kicking...you do what is comfortable and works for you in the past.
Click to expand...
And just like Matthew Lloyd and co were made to with goal kicking, the umpires who wait for the light, then cross to the other side of the circle where they want to bounce the ball from, wipe the ball, take a deep breath, yell out obvious rules which both ruckmen will ignore since nobody ever knows what ruck free kicks are for anyway, realise they've got no breath left from yelling, take another deep breath, walk in at a speed that makes a hippo look quick then bounce it averagely anyway need to be forced to get on with it.
 
Russian said:
And just like Matthew Lloyd and co were made to with goal kicking, the umpires who wait for the light, then cross to the other side of the circle where they want to bounce the ball from, wipe the ball, take a deep breath, yell out obvious rules which both ruckmen will ignore since nobody ever knows what ruck free kicks are for anyway, realise they've got no breath left from yelling, take another deep breath, walk in at a speed that makes a hippo look quick then bounce it averagely anyway need to be forced to get on with it.
Click to expand...

If you watch closely enough (obviously you havent :rolleyes:) umpires never walk to other side of the circle after the light, they start walking in when the light goes on, Id really love to see some vision of what you were describing to back up your argument...:cool:
 

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Razor Ray, The real Interview

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