Southerner In The North
Well-Known Member
Can we see them if so how ? I’m curious.
Club Marks
- Thread starter Southerner In The North
- Start date
Some referees are very dismissive of Club Marks
Paradoxically, focusing on them or trying to get good Club Marks, will inevitably lead to poor marks
In my experience, they are important when assessed over a period of time. They will usually influence your Ref Secretary when it comes to appointments (especially Cup Finals etc.) and I'd be concerned if my marks were crap
Don't let them distract you. Turn up, be courteous, referee your games with a combination of authority/empathy, but don't be demonstrative
Recognise dissent, apply the stepped approach if possible, deal with it as an absolute priority. Bad days are Learning Days, so no need to panic. Easy
Southerner In The North
Well-Known Member
Thanks just curious as seen them mentioned a lot.Some referees are very dismissive of Club Marks
Paradoxically, focusing on them or trying to get good Club Marks, will inevitably lead to poor marks
In my experience, they are important when assessed over a period of time. They will usually influence your Ref Secretary when it comes to appointments (especially Cup Finals etc.) and I'd be concerned if my marks were crap
Don't let them distract you. Turn up, be courteous, referee your games with a combination of authority/empathy, but don't be demonstrative
Recognise dissent, apply the stepped approach if possible, deal with it as an absolute priority. Bad days are Learning Days, so no need to panic. Easy
Following on from @Big Cat , there's an old cliche that the way to get good club marks is by turning up, letting teams do what they want for 90 minutes, collecting your money and leaving. That's nonsense - apart from anything else, teams who like that approach aren't going to give good club marks anyway, while teams who want to play football but have instead been kicked around for 90 minutes will be especially unhappy with you!
In one of the leagues I work in the Ref Sec will send you your average mark every 12 games or so if you ask. They don't highlight individual games or clubs but it gives you an idea which way you are heading. There's always someone who will score you low because their team lost and they will blame the Ref because he gave a throw the wrong way etc......but with 12 games the average should reflect how people see you performing overall
Never seen or asked for my club marks and I cant say I'm curious about them. But if club marks are being looked at from a analysis perspective then perhaps it would be prudent to take the top and bottom 10% away and give the average based on the rest. Get rid of the 1/10 because you gave a contested last min pen and the 10/10 the other team gave for awarding them the last min pen!
I always ask for my average at the end of the season because it give you an idea of how your progressing.
For these types of statistics, the 'median score' is far and and away more useful than the 'mean score'. But I doubt many football people would know that, which is why I understand they use 'mean scores' for promotion (4 to 3 and above) (stand to be corrected). Which is pretty much what you've said with the ignoring the top/bottom 10% of scores
Last edited:
The median score is a pretty useless as a measure of performance. It is simply the middle value (or mean of the two middle values if there are an even number of marks) of an ordered list of numbers.
The mean on the other hand can give an indication of consistency but itself can be disproportionately affected by an outlier, i.e. a mark that is significantly divergent from the other marks in the data set. I suspect some very low marks "disappear" because of their outlier effect.
/justsayin
RefJef
RefChat Addict
If we are interested in consistency then the standard deviation is what we should be using. A lower standard deviation would suggest a more consistent referee over a season (now that may be consistently bad, good or indifferent, the standard deviation won’t tell you which.)
if, as I suspect, outliers will be more likely at the lower end of the data than the upper end, the both means and medians will be skewed downwards.
Probably the best combination to use (whilst keeping things (relatively) simple) is to use both the mean and standard deviation, both of which can easily be calculated by excel.
(As I write this, I am smiling to myself. It is analogous to so many of my lessons when the maths has been derailed by students chatting about football. Here the tables have been turned, and football chat has been usurped by maths, and that makes me happy!)
Thanks Jef. It was late and I could not remember the word deviation
Very hard to skew 'median' once the sample size is into double figures. That's why it's a rock solid number
They use the median in golf to calculate handicaps for that reason
The lockdown has clearly skewed the number of marbles lost by @Brian Hamilton
I think the term you are looking for is resistant, not rock solid. As for golf, it is a good walk spoiledVery hard to skew 'median' once the sample size is into double figures. That's why it's a rock solid number
They use the median in golf to calculate handicaps for that reason
The lockdown has clearly skewed the number of marbles lost by @Brian Hamilton
During lockdown I have
- completed my QTS
- achieved a solid pass in my PGCE (64%)
- taught vulnerable and key worker children
- continued my CPD across the summer
- taught every day in HT1 and HT2
- been paid to do the best job in the world (yes even better than refereeing, tutoring or observing)
I'm what's called a 'Mental Health First Aider' in my workplace, don't you know
I've had many a colleague on the sofa!
However, I must concede, I haven't done any of those things you've listed over Lockdown
Last edited:
What other sports allows you to beat your anger out with a club on your own.....
When golf came back after Lockdown 1 is was on the tee at 8.10 on the first possible date and I hope to be on at a similar time this Wednesday. Golf has saved my mental health, as otherwise I saw nobody else as working from home.
I don't care how clubs mark me, I turn up carry out my duties to the best of my knowledge and ability , complete my correspondence and I'm on my way home. I know myself if I had a good or bad game
I had a look at the criteria the clubs mark the ref against and for me it's wrong.
It should read-
Did you have a ref today? Yes
The end
I appreciate that the higher you go club marks can make or break your season but even so you can't control how clubs mark you
I had a look at the criteria the clubs mark the ref against and for me it's wrong.
It should read-
Did you have a ref today? Yes
The end
I appreciate that the higher you go club marks can make or break your season but even so you can't control how clubs mark you
I'm not sure I agree. Having played for two decades, we knew who could and couldn't referee. I think referees overstate the LOTG. They're hardly rocket science. Most players/coaches have a fair idea of a foul/caution/dismissal when they see one, they just don't know the correct terminology.
Aside from Observer marks, there's nothing else to gauge performances at grass-roots
From my limited visibility of Club Marks thus far, they've roughly married up with my expectations of the referees I know
Last edited:
They have their place. I'm not going to pretend they are perfect as far from it, but they serve a purpose.
There is evidence that on the whole club mark merit tables align reasonably closely to observer merit tables. Most supply league appointments officers will tell you that it is very rare these days to have referees in band A for clubs and E for observers, or vice versa, and even A and C or D are rare. And I remember the FA saying that at level 3 it was a similar story.
I've been a RefsSec at grass roots on several occasions and in my experience over a season club marks line up with my evaluation of referees I have seen, and for those that are on promotion schemes their observations marks. And there is the big problem if we didn't have club marks, I had 80+ referees on the panel so I can't go and watch them myself, and the vast majority weren't on promotion schemes. So without club marks how would I know which ones were performing well and which ones were absolute disasters?
And a final point to end on, referees are being paid to provide a service. These days when you as a consumer pay for a service, such as a builder, plumber, electrician, etc, it is common to rate them in terms of the service they provided. Hence the rise in sites like Checkatrade.com, Trusterdtrader.com, etc, why should referees be any different, after all clubs are consumers of their services? I don't buy that clubs don't understand how to mark referees, I know absolutely nothing about those trades I have listed but it doesn't stop me leaving a mark out of ten for them.
There is evidence that on the whole club mark merit tables align reasonably closely to observer merit tables. Most supply league appointments officers will tell you that it is very rare these days to have referees in band A for clubs and E for observers, or vice versa, and even A and C or D are rare. And I remember the FA saying that at level 3 it was a similar story.
I've been a RefsSec at grass roots on several occasions and in my experience over a season club marks line up with my evaluation of referees I have seen, and for those that are on promotion schemes their observations marks. And there is the big problem if we didn't have club marks, I had 80+ referees on the panel so I can't go and watch them myself, and the vast majority weren't on promotion schemes. So without club marks how would I know which ones were performing well and which ones were absolute disasters?
And a final point to end on, referees are being paid to provide a service. These days when you as a consumer pay for a service, such as a builder, plumber, electrician, etc, it is common to rate them in terms of the service they provided. Hence the rise in sites like Checkatrade.com, Trusterdtrader.com, etc, why should referees be any different, after all clubs are consumers of their services? I don't buy that clubs don't understand how to mark referees, I know absolutely nothing about those trades I have listed but it doesn't stop me leaving a mark out of ten for them.