Queensland umpire Steve Rogers has been recognised with the game’s highest honour, awarded 2024 FIH Umpire of the Yr after a history-making season officiating on the highest degree.
Steve turned the primary Australian to obtain the honour since its inception in 2015 on the glitzy FIH Stars Awards ceremony in Oman in a single day.
His invite to the massive evening, which included information he had received, arrived in his inbox just some months after he umpired the lads’s gold medal match on the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games.
“You by no means count on to get something like this, I needed to learn it a few occasions!” Steve admitted.
“It was just like once I obtained the call-up for the 2023 World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics, I believed ‘Is that this the correct electronic mail?’ I opened it, learn it after which re-read it simply to verify it was for me.
“You go on the market simply to umpire and do your finest each recreation, and now to be awarded this award. It’s so particular.”
The popularity follows the largest 18 months of his profession, which began with a outstanding but well-deserved call-up to the 2023 World Cup.
Travelling as a reserve umpire, Steve made his World Cup debut after an umpire went down sick. That efficiency kickstarted a dream event as he rapidly impressed to earn the appointment of the World Cup males’s remaining.
“It’s been such a whirlwind,” he says, nonetheless in disbelief.
“I keep in mind speaking to the umpire supervisor earlier than the semifinal, and I stated, “Look, I do know I’m carried out, there are extra skilled umpires right here. I’m simply pleased to be right here and I’ve officiated a quarter-final. He needed to interrupt the information to me that I had earned a semifinal, however he couldn’t!”
“I had the identical ideas earlier than the ultimate was introduced at that occasion and once more on the Olympics. The most important moments of your profession go by in a blur, it’s surreal.”
His World Cup remaining efficiency led to his largest call-up but, an Olympic debut on the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games. There, he continued to impress, incomes the game’s pinnacle appointment, the lads’s gold medal remaining.
“I simply keep in mind the goosebumps. Strolling out of the tunnel forward of the match with goosebumps… Even reflecting on it now, it’s simply… wow.”
Steve’s childhood dream of turning into a world umpire and officiating a World Cup or an Olympic remaining began when he was simply 12 years outdated.
A hockey participant on the time, umpiring turned a ardour he stumbled upon by likelihood, due to his older brother, who was a high-level umpire in Queensland.
When an umpire failed to point out up in Ipswich, his brother coerced him to urgently fill a spot and take cost of a decrease senior males’s recreation.
“I didn’t blow my whistle as soon as in that recreation!” He laughs.
“I used to be too petrified! And that’s the place it began.”
Steve places the very best 18 months of his profession right down to his love of hockey, his mentors in Ipswich who helped him via his profession, the help from his household, the alternatives he has obtained in Australia and his resilience to get via the highs and lows of high-performance sport.
When he’s not performing on the highest degree, Steve mentors the following technology of umpires in Australia, and his largest piece of recommendation is a mantra he continues to hold via his profession.
“You’re solely nearly as good as your final recreation,” he says.
“If I am going out in my subsequent recreation and I don’t carry out, that’s what I’ll be remembered for… there are quite a lot of critics, and there’s a lot of criticism directed at umpires, however the primary factor is to go on the market and do your finest each single recreation.
“I can’t thank my household and everybody sufficient for his or her help. It’s been a protracted, lengthy journey that’s for certain. We’ve had quite a lot of ups and downs, so that is fairly particular.”
