Managed to pick up an U13s promotion play-off match line for a local league tonight. Without wanting to seem to far up myself, it's the sort of match that's a bit below my ability as a referee now, but it needed covering so I thought why not.
The issue is, the referees that typically do these sorts of games here in Scotland are ones that aren't active at all in terms of keeping up with the LOTG, and are usually a strong case of being 'last weeks ref'. As such, I'm not expecting any degree of professionalism from either the ref or the other lino; there probably won't be a pre-match briefing from the ref or sufficient warm-up. Having watched some of these games before, you often see the lino about 5 yards behind play, flag in the wrong hand and just generally not displaying good refereeing practice.
Do I just focus on making sure that I do my job correctly, focus on myself and leave the other 2 to their own devices? Or from the outset should I be encouraging the ref to go through a pre-match talk, and trying to encourage them to do the sorts of things that you'd expect of a professional team?
The issue is, the referees that typically do these sorts of games here in Scotland are ones that aren't active at all in terms of keeping up with the LOTG, and are usually a strong case of being 'last weeks ref'. As such, I'm not expecting any degree of professionalism from either the ref or the other lino; there probably won't be a pre-match briefing from the ref or sufficient warm-up. Having watched some of these games before, you often see the lino about 5 yards behind play, flag in the wrong hand and just generally not displaying good refereeing practice.
Do I just focus on making sure that I do my job correctly, focus on myself and leave the other 2 to their own devices? Or from the outset should I be encouraging the ref to go through a pre-match talk, and trying to encourage them to do the sorts of things that you'd expect of a professional team?