I needed to attend to my Futsal referee roster for some development exercises so I set out to arrange the logistics of issuing my usual Classmarker quiz. I had to generate and manually send out codes to new referees to have access to the quiz but there weren’t very many so it was done quite quickly. I was pleasantly surprised to see the immediate response to the e-mail; almost ten referees had completed it within 24 hours. I felt giving a week was a fair timeline so I’ll see how everyone does.
Did I say I love this method? I did all the work a year and a half ago and now I can just issue it and see the marks come up. No muss no fuss.
I did some quick scheduling for the rest of the week for the league and decided to try a new scheduling technique; reverse scheduling. Find referees with a low amount of games and use their availability to fill in games to balance the total number of games done by the refs. I finished most of the schedule that way having left a few games for some stragglers later.
Wednesday
3rd last game of the season. Cool day. I strolled down to the field but the geese had another plan. For future reference, they don’t back down. I kept my distance and navigated around them.
I met an out-of-town referee who was doing the prior game. The referee crew I was working with watched a bit of his game before heading back to the dressing rooms. When he came inside later, we had an agreed transaction:
I have to say I had a shaky game.
The first half went worse than I thought from my personal performance standpoint. I hadn’t made any wrong decisions that resulted in incorrect restarts or had any bearing on the game whatsoever but a few scenarios confused me and I wasn’t able to make a decision quickly. There was a deep chat about it at half-time and I was well-aware of it. It was the same referee from Friday and we tried to cover the important points again.
The second half was no better but this time, I knew I wasn’t doing great. I got caught with half-time dyslexia and pointed the wrong direction on an obvious throw-in decision early on but immediately seeing the look on the referee’s face made me realise the mistake. For all the faults, there wasn’t a peep from the bench staff. Odd. I would have expected them to capitalise somehow. It almost felt like I was invisible that day.
Plenty to think on here. I was not pleased with how things went but all critical decisions were handled.
Friday
On Friday, I ran into a player from the week before’s derby game. He apologised for how the team and coach had behaved. I chuckled telling him I knew it was part and parcel of the game and quite frankly, I had enjoyed it. Knowing the source of the abuse beforehand makes it very easy to shake it off with a thick skin. At least, I like to think I have one.
I also had a job interview earlier in the day. I feel that’s important to mention because paving a referee career path requires just as much attention to that area as it does to whistling on the pitch. Hopefully I’ll hear back soon on how that went.
Saturday
This was the first time I had travelled west from home and it was a long distance drive. One of the few truly travel games. Almost a full day dedication which was difficult considering I had a busy start of next week. The referee arrived early to pick me up. It was a long car trip and it always leaves plenty of time to chat and bond. After all, how can you say nothing in 2.5 hours of round-trip driving?
The coaches seemed to be complaining about every call or the other and contradicting themselves on multiple occasions. I elected for silence and proceeding with my job. It was a competitive game that required a bit of bench management. These past two months have been a lesson/tutorial in being AR1. The weather was much cooler than I expected. I hadn’t anticipated it or dressed well enough to handle it but I wore my warm-up shirt, adidas 2014 SS and LS navy blue which kept my upper body warm. I didn’t really need gloves though.
It felt like a very long drive back because we had really exhausted a lot of topics to talk about on a previous trip and on the way to the game. I wonder how experienced crews work with this.
Sunday
The referee for the game switched the night before so my carpooling arrangements changed as well. I cancelled my car rental at the expense of a reservation fee and the referee picked me up a little more than 90 minutes before KO.
There was nothing much of note in the game as the overall effect of the game meant very little as the teams were high enough in the standings to progress into play-offs. I worked on providing quicker signals and found it harder. There was less thinking time than I was used to.
The first game ended and I was hanging around for the second for my ride back so I had brought my laptop along to get my work done in the chilly weather.
This was the last game of my season. Perhaps sitting and waiting outside after dampened the mood a bit and depression didn’t settle in. That and some busy school work made me look forward to the free time ahead
I kept my uniform on under my tracksuit in case I was needed. I would have been able to hop up at a moment’s notice.
I wasn’t needed but still…
so I worked. I had plenty of work to do so I sat behind the fence typing away in temperature close to zero degrees. I did sneak a few peeks at how the referee was doing for the next game and it was enjoyable to see him in action. I knew him from the previous area I lived in a couple of years ago and his experience was well-demonstrated in the game.
When work and play mix…
Continue reading...
Did I say I love this method? I did all the work a year and a half ago and now I can just issue it and see the marks come up. No muss no fuss.
I did some quick scheduling for the rest of the week for the league and decided to try a new scheduling technique; reverse scheduling. Find referees with a low amount of games and use their availability to fill in games to balance the total number of games done by the refs. I finished most of the schedule that way having left a few games for some stragglers later.
Wednesday
3rd last game of the season. Cool day. I strolled down to the field but the geese had another plan. For future reference, they don’t back down. I kept my distance and navigated around them.
I met an out-of-town referee who was doing the prior game. The referee crew I was working with watched a bit of his game before heading back to the dressing rooms. When he came inside later, we had an agreed transaction:
I have to say I had a shaky game.
The first half went worse than I thought from my personal performance standpoint. I hadn’t made any wrong decisions that resulted in incorrect restarts or had any bearing on the game whatsoever but a few scenarios confused me and I wasn’t able to make a decision quickly. There was a deep chat about it at half-time and I was well-aware of it. It was the same referee from Friday and we tried to cover the important points again.
The second half was no better but this time, I knew I wasn’t doing great. I got caught with half-time dyslexia and pointed the wrong direction on an obvious throw-in decision early on but immediately seeing the look on the referee’s face made me realise the mistake. For all the faults, there wasn’t a peep from the bench staff. Odd. I would have expected them to capitalise somehow. It almost felt like I was invisible that day.
Plenty to think on here. I was not pleased with how things went but all critical decisions were handled.
Friday
On Friday, I ran into a player from the week before’s derby game. He apologised for how the team and coach had behaved. I chuckled telling him I knew it was part and parcel of the game and quite frankly, I had enjoyed it. Knowing the source of the abuse beforehand makes it very easy to shake it off with a thick skin. At least, I like to think I have one.
I also had a job interview earlier in the day. I feel that’s important to mention because paving a referee career path requires just as much attention to that area as it does to whistling on the pitch. Hopefully I’ll hear back soon on how that went.
Saturday
This was the first time I had travelled west from home and it was a long distance drive. One of the few truly travel games. Almost a full day dedication which was difficult considering I had a busy start of next week. The referee arrived early to pick me up. It was a long car trip and it always leaves plenty of time to chat and bond. After all, how can you say nothing in 2.5 hours of round-trip driving?
The coaches seemed to be complaining about every call or the other and contradicting themselves on multiple occasions. I elected for silence and proceeding with my job. It was a competitive game that required a bit of bench management. These past two months have been a lesson/tutorial in being AR1. The weather was much cooler than I expected. I hadn’t anticipated it or dressed well enough to handle it but I wore my warm-up shirt, adidas 2014 SS and LS navy blue which kept my upper body warm. I didn’t really need gloves though.
It felt like a very long drive back because we had really exhausted a lot of topics to talk about on a previous trip and on the way to the game. I wonder how experienced crews work with this.
Sunday
The referee for the game switched the night before so my carpooling arrangements changed as well. I cancelled my car rental at the expense of a reservation fee and the referee picked me up a little more than 90 minutes before KO.
There was nothing much of note in the game as the overall effect of the game meant very little as the teams were high enough in the standings to progress into play-offs. I worked on providing quicker signals and found it harder. There was less thinking time than I was used to.
The first game ended and I was hanging around for the second for my ride back so I had brought my laptop along to get my work done in the chilly weather.
This was the last game of my season. Perhaps sitting and waiting outside after dampened the mood a bit and depression didn’t settle in. That and some busy school work made me look forward to the free time ahead
I kept my uniform on under my tracksuit in case I was needed. I would have been able to hop up at a moment’s notice.
I wasn’t needed but still…
so I worked. I had plenty of work to do so I sat behind the fence typing away in temperature close to zero degrees. I did sneak a few peeks at how the referee was doing for the next game and it was enjoyable to see him in action. I knew him from the previous area I lived in a couple of years ago and his experience was well-demonstrated in the game.
When work and play mix…
Continue reading...
