Ted Beedles was 45 years old when he began umpiring netball down at Gainsborough. The year was 1999, but the origin story of Ted’s umpiring career began a year earlier when he was watching his two daughters play on a Saturday.

“The lady who was the coach of the team that my older daughter was in said to me, ‘Umpire!’ And I replied, ‘Yeah, okay I’ll have a go.’”

Ted had tried his hand at umpiring and refereeing cricket and touch football—sports he had played before, which meant he was somewhat familiar with the rules. He states he

was always a better umpire/referee than player.

But he learned the rules of netball and passed the exam, beginning to umpire every week in 1999 with an instructor behind him, correcting him whenever he made a mistake.

“I had Terry Moran running behind me blowing her whistle and telling me I had missed some sort of error, contact, obstruction or whatever it was I missed. I slowly started to pick things up and gained a bit more confidence. I would start hearing good things from Terry rather than the criticisms,” says Ted.

One month and two days before he turned 50, Ted was awarded his C Badge in netball umpiring, which allowed him to umpire more games, teach younger umpires, and demonstrate his experience to coaches and spectators.

Ted then became even more involved with netball through the administrative side. He started as registrar and then became umpires convenor for Gainsborough. After this, he served as umpires convenor for Kiama Netball Association for nine years.

“Umpires convenor entails things like organising the umpire’s exam—a paper exam twice a year—which involves coordinating people to come in and take the test. You’d also organise umpires to go to different carnivals throughout the year—all the state titles,” says Ted.

But Ted’s passion is for umpiring; he simply can’t get enough of it. He finds it hard to describe the feeling he experiences when running back and forth on the court, but he knows he loves it.

“I don’t know how to put it into words, I just love being involved. I’m playing netball each week, but I’m playing the umpire position—not wing defence, or wing attack or centre—I’m umpire. But I’m playing,” says Ted.

The difficult side of umpiring is that umpires are only human and can only call what they see, which means they may make mistakes. He cites a moment from his training as a great example of this.

“One of the senior umpires came down with a video of her umpiring a game. The video was taken from the opposite side of the court from where she was. In the video, there was an incident where she called a contact,” says Ted.

“From the video, we knew she was wrong. But she said, ‘The view on my side looked like it was the other way,’ and she only knew she was wrong from watching the video. So, where you are makes a difference to how you see what happened.”

So, umpires do unfortunately receive unfair criticism from players and spectators. Although Ted says he is old enough to not let it affect him, he believes it can discourage bright and talented umpires from continuing.

“It’s very frustrating for me because we have a lot of good competent umpires, and especially the young ones; once they have a bad experience with a team, we lose them,” says Ted.

He believes a good umpire is consistent with their calls. He recalls a game where he was forced to umpire a grand final between Gainsborough and another club, despite the potential for a conflict of interest.

“We usually try to avoid that, but that day we didn’t have enough adequate umpires available, so I had to. The other coach said after the game that she didn’t always agree with my decisions, but she felt that I was consistent. I think that is the best feedback an umpire can get,” says Ted.

The best games to umpire are the ones that flow continuously. This is when Ted feels most in tune with the game—when both umpires and players work together to create a seamless and beautiful flow.

Ted has many highlights in his long umpiring career, including grand finals and state championship games. However, he remembers one particular game he umpired with his daughter as one of his best experiences.

“The day before my 64th birthday, I umpired a game between Central and Beachettes. The umpire on the other side of the court was my daughter Annette. At a normal game here in Kiama, if the two teams between them score 80 goals—that’s a reasonable game. We umpired that game and at the end of it, it was a draw 64-64, which was funny

because I turned 64 the next day,” says Ted.

“And that was a fantastic game because it flowed, and I was confident enough to call the advantages and let the game keep going, instead of stopping for penalties. If I can see a game that flows, and I’m helping that, then that really pleases me.”

In addition to his enjoyment of the game, Ted emphasises that the friendships he has formed with both young and old—whether they are players, umpires, coaches, or administrators—have been invaluable.

In 2024, Ted unfortunately broke his rib and was unable to umpire for part of the year. However, he maintains that he will be back and ready to go for the next season, hoping to inspire more men to get involved in the great sport of netball!