Alison Keogh recalls some early run-ins with one of the umpires who regularly took charge of her games when she was playing for Three Rock Rovers. It was civil enough at first when he'd give a foul against her – "I would politely inquire, 'what was that for?'" – but, gradually, her questioning of his decisions became a little more, well, firm. To the point where he suggested she find herself a whistle and take up umpiring herself.
Did you give him a terrible time?
“Oh yeah,” she says, “we had a few uncomfortable car journeys home”.
They say you should never work with a family member. You probably shouldn’t be umpired by one either. In this case, Keogh’s father, John.
But she took his advice, gave umpiring a go, her first outing a Leinster Division 14 game. She survived the ordeal, partly helped by “the two teams seeing that I knew some of the rules any way”, and decided that she actually enjoyed it.
Still, she’d have laughed heartily if you’d told her then that come April 30th, 2022, she’d become the first woman to umpire a men’s Irish Senior Cup final. Her dad might have laughed too.
It has, then, been some trip since that Division 14 fixture, the 34-year-old now one of the sport’s most highly-regarded international umpires, her schedule in the last few weeks an indication of the demand for her services.
“I left home on March 21st and got back on April 19th,” she says, “there’s been a lot of washing going on”.
From Germany to South Africa, to the Netherlands to Banbridge and, next, Belfield. Along the way she's taken charge of the women's Junior World Cup final, Pro League internationals between Germany, Spain and the United States, the Euro Hockey League final between Amsterdam and Den Bosch and the Champions Trophy meeting of Pembroke Wanderers and Catholic Institute. On Saturday, if her washing is done in time, she'll team up with Warren McCully for the meeting of the men of Lisnagarvey and Monkstown.
A digital health researcher in UCD, she deems herself "exceptionally lucky" to have a job that allows her to pursue her umpiring career, saluting her boss, Prof Brian Caulfield, the director of UCD's Insight Centre for Data Analytics, for giving her the freedom to take off when hockey duty calls.
“My work is research based so I’m lucky that a lot of it can be done remotely,” she says. “So I try to juggle it when I’m away. Writing papers, presentations, that sort of thing can be done anywhere in the world. I’ve done work at 2am in Beijing airport, you do it where you can.”
‘Arrogant and aggressive’
There's been plenty of graft along the way, though. By 24, Keogh was umpiring every weekend, having initially been reluctant to give up playing hockey. She was then invited to take part in a European Hockey Federation Umpire Development Programme, and by 2013 she gained her international badge after officiating at the less than glamorous C Division of the EuroHockey Nations tournament in Greece.
And every step of the way her progress – or lack of it – was monitored. She won’t forget in a hurry being told by those tasked with assessing umpires’ development that she was, in the early stages, “arrogant and aggressive with players”.
“That feedback was really hard to hear at the time, but ultimately it did help me. I’m quite petite, 5ft 2in and barely 50kg, so there was always that sense that you are physically small so you’re going to have to make yourself big in some way. You can do that by your presence, but I probably went too big until I found my feet.
“It was just small, subtle things they picked up on, like the expression on my face when I spoke with players. That needed some self-reflection, hard as it was, but I think self-reflection is the biggest skill you can have as an official. Maybe those moments were moments of self-doubt? I had to figure that out.
“But with experience, especially at international level, you don’t need to be like that anymore, you build a rapport with the players, you have a foundation, if you’ve been appointed at that level you must be okay. You don’t need to be big, a more gentle authority comes with that level.”
She subscribes to the old adage about a good umpire/referee being one who isn’t noticed during the course of a game. “Although there’ll always be a moment when you have to make yourself known, when you have to manage a situation, set a line and say, ‘please don’t cross that again’. But then your work is done and you can go back to the calm, the anonymity.
“And being anonymous is probably what we’re aiming for. No official wants to be talked about after a game because it’s usually not for a good reason. You just want to be known by players as someone they can trust, someone whose first duty is to protect their safety, then to protect their skill, and then to promote flow. Ultimately, you want it to be a great spectacle.”
Agonisingly close
What international players and umpires have in common is the dream of making it to an Olympic or World Cup final, umpiring in one or the other, or, preferably, both, Keogh’s ultimate ambition. She was on duty at the last World Cup, and will be again at this summer’s tournament, but she came agonisingly close to making it to the Tokyo Olympics, ending up as first reserve on the umpires’ panel.
“By far my biggest disappointment so far,” she says, “being asked to be the reserve was nice because it meant I was next on the list, but in another way it was a kick in the teeth to know you were so close. So, yeah, disappointing, to put it mildly.
“But that’s just when you have to work harder, look at the things you need to improve, to make sure you make it next time. It all depends on performance, some things that might be outside your control, and a little bit of luck too.”
Mind you, if she gets to umpire an Olympic or World Cup final, it still mightn’t top her happiest day in hockey when she umpired a Leinster Second Division game two years ago. Her officiating partner that day? Her dad. “It was lovely,” she laughs, and, she says, they worked well together too. Not once did he politely inquire, ‘what was that for?’. The journey home was comfortable.
