The Ref Stop

Bournemouth v West Ham

Russell Jones said:
It's certainly been an uphill battle these last few years!! However I'm heartened by the shift in the EPL this season, as evidenced by the dramatic reduction in the number of penalties for HB. Keep the faith good soldier, our cause is just and we shall prevail :)
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Can't you use your lofty status to have a word with the 'powers that be'. I suggest the EPL breaks away, gets rid of VAR and tells UEFA and FIFA to do one. Whilst you're at it, the PGMOL could sack off the 'dead wood' referees that represent most of SG1 and replace them with some of the new lads coming through. Then I'll let you have HB refereed however you wish
 
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Big Cat said:
Can't you use your lofty status to have a word with the 'powers that be'. I suggest the EPL breaks away, gets rid of VAR and tells UEFA and FIFA to do one. Whilst you're at it, the PGMOL could sack off the 'dead wood' referees that represent most of SG1 and replace them with some of the new lads coming through. Then I'll let you have HB refereed however you wish
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Bit harsh with dead wood referees with SG1, especially when PGMOL had a purge a few seasons ago with removing Moss, Atkinson & Dean, along with Mason.
 
DavidObs said:
Bit harsh with dead wood referees with SG1, especially when PGMOL had a purge a few seasons ago with removing Moss, Atkinson & Dean, along with Mason.
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We've just had four games without VAR and four KMI's gone wrong

I don't think the crop are good enough. The reasons are complex. Just had a quick glance through the names and there's eight that don't make the grade IMHO. Potentially, there's some good ones coming through, but SG1 guidance/instruction, coupled with the challenges of refereeing with Big Brother on the scene, and I wouldn't be that optimistic for those new lads either

There's a handful who are really poor and surely only keep their jobs because of employment law. I know that's harsh and not great for a 'colleague' to state such opinion, but I'm not one who blindly backs referees just because we're in it together
 
Russell Jones said:
I'm confused. If you felt that her arm position was (arguably) justified and natural for the body movement being undertaken, then that's her making her body naturally bigger and therefore not an offence?

When training handball to new referees, I make a point of demonstrating half a dozen entirely natural positions when playing (running, jumping, falling etc) all of which broaden the body silhouette / make the body "bigger" but all of which are entirely to be expected and therefore not something we should penalise
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Is there anywhere where these natural positions can be viewed please?
 
Big Cat said:
Anyway, 'unnatural position' is just a term that's used to make HB easier to referee. Hand/arm above head height for instance. That is one cast iron classification of unnatural position
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Couple of things.

Firstly, as @JamesL says, the law talks about the hand/arm making the body unnaturally bigger rather than it being in an unnatural position, and secondly there is no reference any more to any specific hand/arm positions in the law.

All it says is that:

A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation.
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Peter Grove said:
Couple of things.

Firstly, as @JamesL says, the law talks about the hand/arm making the body unnaturally bigger rather than it being in an unnatural position, and secondly there is no reference any more to any specific hand/arm positions in the law.

All it says is that:
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I think the new member was specifically referring to a comment by Russell Jones.
 
FirsFox40 said:
Player really made me laugh when I was on the line in pre-season after R gave a pen for handball.

“Unnatural position? It’s on the end of my f**king arm!”
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No doubt he has a very good point. I used to feel like that. Ball hits my hand/arm, PK awarded. I felt like I needed to chop them off before KO
 
I think if everyone just accepts there is no perfect way of defining handball then everyone would be a little more relaxed about it.

I see people arguing for any touch of the hand or arm to be handball so everyone knows where they stand - congratulations, you've now turned football in to a game where people try to get the ball in to the opposition penalty area and pelt it at peoples hands/arms.

I see people arguing that it should have to be a deliberate movement of the hand / arm towards the ball. If you do that, you're gonna have players training on how to make a deliberate handball look non deliberate.
 
Big Cat said:
We've just had four games without VAR and four KMI's gone wrong

I don't think the crop are good enough. The reasons are complex. Just had a quick glance through the names and there's eight that don't make the grade IMHO. Potentially, there's some good ones coming through, but SG1 guidance/instruction, coupled with the challenges of refereeing with Big Brother on the scene, and I wouldn't be that optimistic for those new lads either

There's a handful who are really poor and surely only keep their jobs because of employment law. I know that's harsh and not great for a 'colleague' to state such opinion, but I'm not one who blindly backs referees just because we're in it together
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I would have agreed with you a few seasons ago, but I'd say it is currently a pretty strong group. Jones, Madley and Barrott are significant improvements on those they replaced, and those at the top of the list to come in like Josh Smith and Lewis Smith look very promising.

Room for improvement though, and I've said for years that there are too many journeymen at SG2, there should be a rule that if you haven't made SG1 after 5 years on SG2 you go back to the standard EFL list. The likes of Davies, Langford, Stroud, Simpson and Ward are never going to make SG1, so if SG2 is truly supposed to be a development ground for promising referees I can't see how them being there helps in any way.
 
RustyRef said:
I've said for years that there are too many journeymen at SG2, there should be a rule that if you haven't made SG1 after 5 years on SG2 you go back to the standard EFL list.
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Not sure how you'd get around employment law with that one.

SG2 are all employed too and you do still need some experienced heads around the place, imo.
 
JamesL said:
Not sure how you'd get around employment law with that one.

SG2 are all employed too and you do still need some experienced heads around the place, imo.
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Agree it isn't easy, but the clever lawyers the FA and PGMOL have should be able to come up with some kind of framework that sits within employment laws. Also agree that some experienced heads are good, but I'm really not sure that having 55 year old referees at SG2 is helping to develop the new breed of referees. And the problem I see from watching a lot of Championship football is it is some of these older referees that really struggle in games. I don't blame them, as if I was in my 50s on the SG2 list I'd want to keep going for as long as possible, but there needs to be a way to take the decision for them.
 
JamesL said:
Not sure how you'd get around employment law with that one.

SG2 are all employed too and you do still need some experienced heads around the place, imo.
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Sign them to SG2 on a 5 year contract? Either you get promoted and accept a new SG1 contract or it expires naturally.
 
GraemeS said:
Sign them to SG2 on a 5 year contract? Either you get promoted and accept a new SG1 contract or it expires naturally.
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It isn't that straight forward unfortunately, IR35 changed that. Prior to IR35 people working on contracts had zero protection, they could be released without any reason as long as they were given their notice period. IR35 saw the introduction of fixed term contracts (FTCs), and anyone on an FTC has the same employment rights as a full time employee. Using an example, if I recruit someone on a 12 month FTC I can choose not to renew it, but then legally I cannot bring someone else into that role as effectively I have made the role redundant. As I understand it SG1 and SG2 officials are on FTCs, therefore they would have to be performance managed out just like a permanent employee would.

Referees would fail the IR35 disguised employment test, so using them as purely casual contractors wouldn't work. The only option I can see is don't pay them a salary / retainer at all, just pay them per game and massively hike their match fees. That way there are no employment law blockers, they effectively just become casual employees. But that brings questions around what happens if they are injured, they'd have zero income, and might also prevent referees wanting to go to the professional levels.
 
RefereeX said:
I see people arguing that it should have to be a deliberate movement of the hand / arm towards the ball. If you do that, you're gonna have players training on how to make a deliberate handball look non deliberate.
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Well, we were already there. The Law was “deliberate.” The concept of unnaturally bigger grew out of catching things that were actually deliberate but well disguised. The. We decided it was something separate from deliberate.
 
RustyRef said:
It isn't that straight forward unfortunately, IR35 changed that. Prior to IR35 people working on contracts had zero protection, they could be released without any reason as long as they were given their notice period. IR35 saw the introduction of fixed term contracts (FTCs), and anyone on an FTC has the same employment rights as a full time employee. Using an example, if I recruit someone on a 12 month FTC I can choose not to renew it, but then legally I cannot bring someone else into that role as effectively I have made the role redundant. As I understand it SG1 and SG2 officials are on FTCs, therefore they would have to be performance managed out just like a permanent employee would.

Referees would fail the IR35 disguised employment test, so using them as purely casual contractors wouldn't work. The only option I can see is don't pay them a salary / retainer at all, just pay them per game and massively hike their match fees. That way there are no employment law blockers, they effectively just become casual employees. But that brings questions around what happens if they are injured, they'd have zero income, and might also prevent referees wanting to go to the professional levels.
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@RustyRef is pretty much right re:employment law , but someone/anyone can be “got rid of”/“let go” and replaced without the need for any reason/redundancy in their first two years of employment (used to be 1 year, was raised to 2 years by the the previous Tory government in circa 2012(?), I think the current Labour government may return it to 1 year) as long as not for a protracted characteristic (race, gender, age etc). Things may be different under IR35 FTC, I don’t know.

So if the referees were employed as employers - and @RustyRef is correct, referees would fail IR35 test - they could be “sacked” with ease in their first two years of employment, after which they would need to be “got rid of” by following a capability process, which would be lengthy and expensive.
 
I'm obviously not remotely knowledgeable on this subject, but why does all of the above not then apply to footballers and their "X-year contracts"? If a player gets to the end of their contact (even if it's been more than 2 years), the club isn't obliged to continue employing them or go through a sacking process, then can just move on separately. I specifically remember this happening with Pogba, where United no longer wanted him but his wages were so high that they couldn't sell, so they basically accepted a year of paying him for basically nothing until the contract timed out.

Specific exceptions for footballers, something to do with footballers having more choice than referees (92 clubs vs 1 or maybe 2 referee employers) or something else I'm not understanding?
 
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