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FANS at last weekend’s Essendon-Kangaroos game have admitted to being underwhelmed by an emotional guernsey-swap in the middle of the MCG.

Only a few of the 40,000- strong crowd actually noticed the post-match exchange as they were watching James Hird swap jumpers with long-time rival Glenn Archer at the time.

What was missed was a guernsey swap between veteran field umpires Trevor Blancheworm and Steven Palemaggot.

“It was a beautiful moment,” Blancheworm told thebladder.com. “Steven and I have umpired AFL matches together for years and we both know there’s a chance this will be our last season and we may never work together again.

“It was sort of spontaneous gesture, to swap shirts. Unfortunately nobody seemed to notice, given we both took off our red shirt and put on the other bloke’s red shirt.

“I was told later that only a couple of amateur statisticians in the crowd noticed we were wearing the wrong numbers on our back and Steven’s shirt looked a size too small for him. Otherwise, the crowd pretty much missed the whole thing, which was a shame.”

A spokesmaggot for the AFL Umpires Department, Jeff Unleashed, confirmed that it was the first emotional moment for on-field officials since two goal umpires wistfully swapped flags in a spontaneous moment dripping in symbolism and meaning.

The crowd pretty much missed that one as well, Unleashed said.