failed by a fraction!

[DavidObs]

Failing a fitness test is very clear - you either pass or you don't. That's totally right and fair.

But observers are where the problem lies as reports are written on DIFFERING opinions. I am sure observers are more lilkely to be singing from the same hymn sheet now comapred to when i went through the sytem when the inconsistency among observers was ridiculous. Often observer reports contradicted each other and as a referee you wouldn't know what to take as advice or bullshit.

I accept my mate was unlikely to have made it with even 71 points.

Somebody said the scored is being raised this season. Is this just to cull more candidates more quickly or will an extra 0..5 make a huge difference?

Referees are not robots-all have their own identity & ways of doing things (within Law) & same with Observers (within Law & the criteria of the Observers manual) & therefore Observers are not where the problem lies. The problem was the minimum mark by your mate was not achieved (for starters), whatever way you look at it.

 

[RustyRef]

Failing a fitness test is very clear - you either pass or you don't. That's totally right and fair.

But observers are where the problem lies as reports are written on DIFFERING opinions. I am sure observers are more lilkely to be singing from the same hymn sheet now comapred to when i went through the sytem when the inconsistency among observers was ridiculous. Often observer reports contradicted each other and as a referee you wouldn't know what to take as advice or bullshit.

I accept my mate was unlikely to have made it with even 71 points.

Somebody said the scored is being raised this season. Is this just to cull more candidates more quickly or will an extra 0..5 make a huge difference?

Why would it be to "cull more places"? The FA need a set number of level 4s in each region, it is just a supply and demand thing, they have more people coming through so can be more choosy as to who they take. If there's an acute shortage of L4s in years to come I fully expect that the minimum mark will come back down again.

Your mate really just needs to take in on the chin, learn from the development advice he has been given, and move on. As I and other have said, averaging 70.98 realistically means he probably wasn't even close, if 70 referees met the 71 average and still weren't taken I'd suspect you'd be looking at more like 71.5 to meet the cut, although that obviously depends on regional differences.

 

[QuaverRef]

But observers are where the problem lies as reports are written on DIFFERING opinions. I am sure observers are more lilkely to be singing from the same hymn sheet now comapred to when i went through the sytem when the inconsistency among observers was ridiculous. Often observer reports contradicted each other and as a referee you wouldn't know what to take as advice or bullshit.

Theres no way to observe something consistently if the thing you’re observing isn’t consistent in itself. We’ll all referee games one weekend with different styles, different teams, different incidents etc so there’s an element of luck to observer reports. We can’t lay the blame entirely on observers when there’s no comparisons to each game week. Your mate was unfortunate, yes. But he won’t be alone in that