Members Blogs

The snow melted earlier in the week to my relief. Winter was here just temporarily but will be back. Since I was expecting a busy weekend and being busy on Saturday night, I decided to move the week’s run to Wednesday. Worked out well with my running partner because he was busy on Saturday too. […] Continue reading...

The use of a referee whistle is an important factor in creating match highlights in the future. Spanish researchers have made an algorithm that generates match highlights. It’s a start. The autoted video selection gets 70 per cent of the … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Tuesday I got a very nice game as an assistant referee during a match of the Dutch u15 National Team against Sparta Rotterdam. A friend of mine was referee during this friendly and he asked me to be one of … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Dutch Referee Blog got lucky that Stephen Green, referee and L4 FA tutor from Reading, wants to share some of his tips with my readers. Thanks for that, much appreciated. His first post is: “Tips from an FA Tutor: Managing … Continue reading → Continue reading...

The IFAB meeting in Northern Ireland took place to talk about the Laws of the Game. One of the new things they want is rolling substitutes for grassroots football. That means that kids can go off and back on during … Continue reading → Continue reading...

There is very little to mention for this week. Snow snow snow. My football flats enjoying a mouthful of snow. Want to see the same view in 2013 same day? I was wearing thermals for most of the week but the snowstorm day after day was relentless. In the middle of the week, I got my shipment of Dolfin whistles. A little later than I hoped because now it’s a little too late to be blowing a whistle out on a football pitch. I think I heard from someone that it doesn’t work indoors. Other than that, plenty of work as it’s getting closer to term’s end. Saturday evening was High Intensity running at 30/40. The warm-up was a good place to start because I was inactive for the 7 days prior. My ankle/leg felt a little shaky but...

I started this week doing a massive load of laundry. The season was over so “cross-contaminated” jerseys from using the same uniform holder could be cleaned and put into storage now. I was relieved to find that none of my adidas 2014 jerseys lost their velcro patches (I hadn’t stitched them this year). Clothes were hardly the focus of this cleaning. Shoes too! A good brushing and cleaning got all the artificial dirt, turf-dust and any mud off them. I also decided to retire my old pair of mundial team shoes since seams were beginning to tear. I may save them just for playing now. My current plan is flat shoes for turf (underarmour) and my pristine mundial team shoes for grass. These are the flats I have been talking about for...

Swamped doesn’t even begin to describe the week I had. The worst part is that an identical week is coming at the end of October. It’s a storm that’s hard to prepare for. It’s a busy term. Monday and Tuesday were football days but playing. It’s a good change and playing at a higher division level sometimes shows some of the deficiencies I have while playing. Monday We were playing a very evenly-skilled team so it was a difficult match. The score went up evenly. In the last minute, we won a penalty while it was a draw. The ball was put in the back of the net and we needed to defend for the last minute. As fate would have it, we were pressed hard and off a corner kick, I stood at the front post. The ball was played in and kicked out...

Day 1 (Saturday) This was a morning similar to those early morning runs because I happen to be the most productive the night before. That means I end up staying awake late and paying for it in the morning. I let the hum of a World Cup match replay try to lull me to sleep but I couldn’t get any sleep for some odd reason. Adrenaline I think? Not sure why. Perhaps excitement. It would have been a very productive night if I stayed up even later. I made sure my bag was packed and I was clean-shaven before I slept so the morning would be minimal work/stress. 2am and up at 6am. I groaned waking up. After a shower and some early morning company, I spent the car ride chatting with fellow referees on the upcoming winter preparation and...

Roger Federer will try to win the Davis Cup in tennis this weekend. He’s a great player from Switzerland who has performed on top level for a very long time. How does he keep that good? And what characteristics of … Continue reading → Continue reading...

KNVB President Michael van Praag expects that the video referee will be introduced in football in The Netherlands next season. That’s what the chairman of the Dutch Football Organisation said when he gave a speech at the referee association in … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Hakan Anaz, the Australian assistant referee during the World Cup, talks about a great moment in his career during this Question & Answer with Dutch Referee Blog. First the most important thing of this year: You were an assistant referee … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Week 43 The football season is over so it meant I needed to re-strategise. With football and futsal running keeping me active all year round, I could use my officiating in both to work on areas of improvement common to both sports. I usually keep a list of improvement items in my game bag so that I can glance at it before the game to pick the one(s) I want to work on. I drew up the new list from memory and comments from fellow referees. I, then, added more by looking at the year’s worth of assessments and picking the stuff I agreed with after prolonged reflection. I decided at the end of the week to go forward with upgrading. There is plenty of time left to move into instructing later on. Assessing too but my focus for now is the...

More assigning to do at the start of week to complete the rest of the season as the quiz closed on Monday night for my referee roster. Finished that off so I won’t have to worry about much for a while. My schedule was clean open. No games for weeks to come. But then… It happened. A game offer came through for a line in a play-off game on Sunday. Then a few Futsal games in my league needed covering on Friday at the end of the week. I suppose it was inevitable. From no games to more games. I tried to explain it to a friend. After all, I had told him I wouldn’t have anymore games. I have also spent the last week thinking about upgrading again. I’m unsure of what the future holds in store for me so I have until the next week to decide...

How to restart play after animal enters the pitch? Good video example of the match Heracles versus PSV with referee Richard Liesveld. The answers follows after the marten left the pitch. http://youtu.be/f0DA0guTOpc The answer is: a drop-ball. Continue reading...

Referee Mike Dean denied QPR a goal in the match against Manchester City. But was he right to do so? Below the video you’ll find the answer plus an explanation based on the Laws of the Game. The situation: Joe … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Something that has come up this past season has been the pre-game net inspection. I don’t mean the very first time when it’s done during the pitch inspection. That’s the real one. I’m talking about when the referee crew splits in the middle of the field and runs to check the nets before taking up their position. This one is for the show. It was recommended to me, as a referee, to ensure that my assistant referees knew how to do a net check with the appropriate mechanics. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for another project for me to undertake to demonstrate the procedure. Here’s a first-person simulation of a net check. And the perspective from the penalty spot. Steps As you arrive at the net, have a quick glance to...

Check out the Stade de Suisse referee dressing room. The stadium is the home of BSC Young Boys and is built in 2005 on the legandary ground of the former “****dorf Stadions” in Bern. It is also built as the … Continue reading → Continue reading...

The Referee Conference in Dublin is where you should be on the 10th of January 2015. You’ll learn from top class international football and rugby referees plus a psychologist who helped the Irish Olympic team. So, top class professionals who … Continue reading → Continue reading...

I needed to attend to my Futsal referee roster for some development exercises so I set out to arrange the logistics of issuing my usual Classmarker quiz. I had to generate and manually send out codes to new referees to have access to the quiz but there weren’t very many so it was done quite quickly. I was pleasantly surprised to see the immediate response to the e-mail; almost ten referees had completed it within 24 hours. I felt giving a week was a fair timeline so I’ll see how everyone does. Did I say I love this method? I did all the work a year and a half ago and now I can just issue it and see the marks come up. No muss no fuss. I did some quick scheduling for the rest of the week for the league and decided to try a new...