The Ref Stop

Audio recording during games

OnlyUseMeWhistle

RefChat Addict
Level 3W Referee
We've discussed at length the issues with self bought body cams not being possible.

But given that comms are permitted in a lot of leagues, could you feasibly justify wearing a mic?

My personal motivation would be evidence in the event of any abuse/extraordinary report worthy stuff, but it could also be a good training tool to hear your voice and delivery.

Assume it faces the same issues as cams?
 
The Ref Stop
Law 5.5

Referees and other ‘on-field’ match officials are prohibited from wearing jewellery or any other electronic equipment, including cameras.

You aren't at a level where comms are allowed and I don't think the two are entirely comparable anyway.
 
Absolutely not allowed, if someone saw it and reported it you would certainly be charged and almost certainly face a suspension. Even if you weren't, any audio you recorded would be totally inadmissible in disciplinary hearings, and that would probably square the circle as the disciplinary panel would have to report you to the RDO for having recorded it in the first place.
 
The more I see of the body cam trial, the more I believe it was done as a PR stunt.
I suspect they are battling with the issues I said all along would happen. Mainly around privacy, which means they need cameras that only record when activated and upload to the cloud, with no access to locally stored footage. Which means they are expensive, and that makes them prohibitive to mass roll out.
 
I suspect they are battling with the issues I said all along would happen. Mainly around privacy, which means they need cameras that only record when activated and upload to the cloud, with no access to locally stored footage. Which means they are expensive, and that makes them prohibitive to mass roll out.
Its not n3cessarily that, it's more around the leagues they selected. The league they selected were is by far the bets run and behaved league. They have very very few issues with behaviour.

There are 2/3 other leagues that have issues they could have trialled it on. But I think they didn't want the negative publicity
 
Its not n3cessarily that, it's more around the leagues they selected. The league they selected were is by far the bets run and behaved league. They have very very few issues with behaviour.

There are 2/3 other leagues that have issues they could have trialled it on. But I think they didn't want the negative publicity
Possibly they are part of the reasons, but the cost is still going to be an issue.

As part of my work I run evaluations and trials, or poof of concepts, and you always go into them with a minimum set of criteria, such as.

- Scope
- Success criteria
- Cost to implement if successful
- Rough implementation plan, including timelines

You need all of those things otherwise if the pilot is successful and you go to ask for funding you will be told to go away. Body cams has a scope, i.e. the pilot leagues involved, but I haven't seen any evidence of any of the other aspects. If there isn't a success criteria how will they know if the trial was successful or not? They might be able to publish the number of assaults or serious incidents in the pilot leagues, but they would also need to publish comparison figures for at least the previous 3 seasons for them have any meaning. A league having zero assaults since web cams is a meaningless stat if they had zero assaults in the 3 years prior to the trial.

Part of me thinks it was just done to keep RSUK quiet and to buy themselves some time.
 
Possibly they are part of the reasons, but the cost is still going to be an issue.

As part of my work I run evaluations and trials, or poof of concepts, and you always go into them with a minimum set of criteria, such as.

- Scope
- Success criteria
- Cost to implement if successful
- Rough implementation plan, including timelines

You need all of those things otherwise if the pilot is successful and you go to ask for funding you will be told to go away. Body cams has a scope, i.e. the pilot leagues involved, but I haven't seen any evidence of any of the other aspects. If there isn't a success criteria how will they know if the trial was successful or not? They might be able to publish the number of assaults or serious incidents in the pilot leagues, but they would also need to publish comparison figures for at least the previous 3 seasons for them have any meaning. A league having zero assaults since web cams is a meaningless stat if they had zero assaults in the 3 years prior to the trial.

Part of me thinks it was just done to keep RSUK quiet and to buy themselves some time.
That's exactly what I mean. Had they wanted proper data, there are other leagues that could have been used innthe trial. But I'm guessing they wouldn't have liked the data that they saw......
 
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