South Australian Eleni Tee (nee Glouftsis), first female – and mother – to umpire Australian Football League games
Eleni Glouftsis, the Australian Football League's first female field umpire at elite level, received her marriage proposal from boundary umpire in the middle of the Melbourne Cricket Ground after the Adelaide v Carlton game in 2019.
Images courtesy AFL and Foxtel
The first woman to umpire in a top-level Australian Football League (AFL) game, Eleni Tee (nee Glouftsis), added another quirky football first in 2019.
Tee was named the 2019 South Australian Young Australian of the Year at an Adelaide Oval ceremony. She also received 2019 Australia Day honours in South Australia for her services to football.
The daughter of two umpires from Greek-Australian background, Tee officiated at her first match at the elite level when Essendon and West Coast met in round nine, 2017, at Etihad Stadium (now Marvel Stadium).
After starting her umpiring career in 2008 and progressing through the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) junior ranks, Glouftsis in 2013 became the first woman to be a field umpire in the senior level of the SANFL competition’s 137-year history.
She moved to Melbourne on a three-year Australian Football League female pathway scholarship at the end of 2014. She umpired 33 Victoria Football League matches from 2015. Glouftsis was added to the AFL umpires rookie list as a field umpire at the beginning of the 2015 season, and trained with a dedicated coach within the AFL umpires group.
In July 2019, after being a field umpire in the game between Adelaide and Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, as Eleni Glouftsis, she received a marriage proposal at the centre of the oval from boundary umpire Dillon Tee, another South Australian.
The Carlton v Adelaide game was Glouftsis’s 25th AFL match as a field umpire while Tee had umpired more than 100 games. But it was the first time the pair, who met in South Australia before moving to Victoria, had umpired together in an AFL match.
On March 16, 2025, Eleni Tee returned to umpire the game between Adelaide and St Kilda at Adelaide Oval, after giving birth to son Levi in the previous year.
