The Ref Stop

Twitter post/rant

E

es1

RefChat Addict
you may (or may not) have seen this post/rant on twitter

https://twitter.com/x/status/1648647512864043008

the rights or wrongs of openly posting such a thread are separate topic altogether, but much of what he says resonates with me and are things i've observed during my time at L4

referees 'coming off' games injured or otherwise at certain times of the season or due to the appointment of certain observers to preserve marks is something that happens on a weekly basis.

there must be a better way? why can't we simply not tell the official when they're being observed full stop or just tell the official they're being observed without telling them who it is? that would be a good start...
 
The Ref Stop
es1 said:
you may (or may not) have seen this post/rant on twitter

https://twitter.com/x/status/1648647512864043008

the rights or wrongs of openly posting such a thread are separate topic altogether, but much of what he says resonates with me and are things i've observed during my time at L4

referees 'coming off' games injured or otherwise at certain times of the season or due to the appointment of certain observers to preserve marks is something that happens on a weekly basis.

there must be a better way? why can't we simply not tell the official when they're being observed full stop or just tell the official they're being observed without telling them who it is? that would be a good start...
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Excellent post @es1

You'd have to dig deep into my historic posts, but I predicted I'd be Band C (Observers) and A (Clubs) on promotion to Level 4
It's turned out the complete opposite, something I'm a bit dismayed about

Unlike most Referees (and the Twitter poster Lawrence), I value Club Marks more than Observer marks. OVER A LONG PERIOD OF GAMES, I fancy Club Marks identify the better referees out there, despite my disappointment and surprise at some of the poor Club Marks I was on the receiving end of this season. That said, I'd like to get Promoted next year, so I face the same battle as everyone, balancing the two sets of marks off against one another

In a nutshell, Observer Marks are flawed and Club Marks are flawed, but I'd argue there are more flaws to the former than the latter
Not least because we get Club Marks on every game, so they're statistically more relevant
 
es1 said:
I'm going to be bottom 5%, marks from our step 7 league average low 60s...carnage in every game
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That's very funny TBF!
At least I clambered to the 70th percentile :oops: Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the impossibility of our job!
 
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I have even less respect for Observers Assistant Marks
70% luck, 30% ability
Maybe even more pronounced than that. If the AR has an anonymous game, then hello 72

Keep in mind though that I finished 8/50 on Observers, but I fancy that's just because I've learnt what they want and got the opportunity to tick some of their boxes. I don't think that makes me a blinding Ref... far from it TBH
One game I had 3 PK shouts. Reckon I might have gotten them ALL wrong. Clubs hung me out to dry, but Observer backed me on process, positioning and because I Sin Binned half the participants. So who was right?

Anyway, interesting Tweets that I'd mostly be inclined to agree with
 
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Also, the Tweeter makes a good point. My final Observed game was one that another Ref might have pulled out from
I was higher up the Merit Table after 4 observations, 4th or 5th
Then I get Top v Bottom on 4G
Nothing game, scored 72.5 which knackered my average. Was on the cards as soon as the Appt. came through. Didn't matter in the end because Clubs has already nailed me to the mast

Finally, as I'd done my 10 games by mid-March, I didn't get any middles at the Business End of the season, whereas Refs who had poor availability got the interesting games (to reach 10) with something riding on them
First Year Level 4 Lessons Learnt
 
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Referees have always played the game when it comes to promotion, and probably always will do. I never came off a game because of a specific observer, but I was told by more experienced L4 and L3 referees to do so if I got certain people. I was also told in no uncertain times by multiple referees to never accept a semi-final appointment if you are in line for promotion, as the losing club always clobber the referee.

No system will ever be perfect, but it is much better now than it has been in the past when you had some assessors averaging 80 and others 70. I don't really like it that a referee who does a good job in a game where nothing happens finds it hard to get a good mark, but equally it was much more wrong that I could get 84 in a game where little happened.
 
The dream is a system where the difference can be seen between a referee having "a quiet game" due to luck vs due to intelligent low-level interventions keeping things calm.

The latter is a really important skill that I will agree is more likely to be recognised by overall club marks than one-off observations. Nothing happening in an observed match is just simply bad news in the current system regardless of how good the observer is, whereas a pattern of everyone being broadly happy with low-key officiating should show up in good club marks.

It does baffle me that everyone just accepts observers are looking for different things than clubs though. Observers are neutral and have the experience to look for more detail, and club marks are available more often and so cover a wider range of games - that should in theory be the only difference. But it's just widely accepted that in any given observed game, officials will frequently need to make a choice between boosting their observation score and club score. And not a specific club's score (which might just mean not sending their player off for a borderline offence), but club scores overall, including the club that would theoretically benefit.

The standards should be the same for both. Disconnects between the LOTG and "what football expects" only make life harder for officials and make players/fans/managers have less faith in the quality of officials they're getting, because perfectly correct decisions feel wrong. With the exception of 1) safety concerns where we have to prioritise what's right over what's expected and 2) simply biased views from teams, most decisions should be either correct or incorrect, in the eyes of both observers and clubs. The fact that those differences do exist isn't an observation scheme problem, these are football law and culture problems, and they're ones that directly affect which officials do well and which don't
 
@es1 @Big Cat For years, the FA have been refining the observations programme, so that we can mark what we see.

The emphasis for timed evidence is driven by referees who had bad marks wanting to know what and when they did things wrong. So, without "timed evidence", we can't say good things. So a quiet match, where everything runs smoothly, will by the marking criteria, result in a standard mark. Also, the same with AR marking, if you do nothing, then there is nothing to write about. The only way of knowing the quite impact you had would be to mic you up, and for us to listen to the match.

Is this the prefect system ? NO, but like everything somebody has to think of a better system.

Club marks are a necessary evil. The clubs want to mark referees even if they are not processes by the FA for promotion. But then you get referees who play to the observers getting promoted and the clubs think they are terrible referees. The only way club marks would work better would be get your position in the league (not the pool) and then scale up for the pool - especially in Yorks where we have a Step 7 league as a marking league. Those Secretary tend to mark the referee lower if they have numerous cards or lose !
 
lincs22 said:
But then you get referees who play to the observers getting promoted and the clubs think they are terrible referees.
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This is the issue I have - why is that a thing? Why don't the same actions make observers and (reasonable) club officials happy?

Those being different objectives is just an unfair position to be put in and is directly the source of so much of the complaints around observations and promotion.
 
GraemeS said:
This is the issue I have - why is that a thing? Why don't the same actions make observers and (reasonable) club officials happy?

Those being different objectives is just an unfair position to be put in and is directly the source of so much of the complaints around observations and promotion.
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That is the problem with the whole of football officiating.....
the observers are looking for you to do things correctly and accurate and the clubs not to anything bad to their team.... Just look at the EPL and the issues for handballs recently, where we as referees have one opinion and the players/team officials and TV idiots have a different opinion. And these are the best referees in the country

😩
 
lincs22 said:
That is the problem with the whole of football officiating.....
the observers are looking for you to do things correctly and accurate and the clubs not to anything bad to their team.... Just look at the EPL and the issues for handballs recently, where we as referees have one opinion and the players/team officials and TV idiots have a different opinion. And these are the best referees in the country

😩
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In my experience, for borderline sanctions, it much 'safer' for the R to get the card out in terms of the O's score, but it's much 'safer' to leave the card in the pocket as far as the Club's score is concerned. That's the main difference. For clear sanctions, both the O and the Clubs want the card

It can also help to have subjective KMD's to make when Observed. These scenarios are a nightmare for Club Marks though cos the aggrieved Club will go to Town with a low mark. Again, very clear KMD's are probably good for both O marks and Club marks

Ultimately, there's an awful lot of luck involved with how games pan out.
I must admit, if I could have the season over again, it would be tempting to pull out of my final observed game (top v bottom on 4G because that was a dead rubber on paper with two well behaved teams... and that's exactly how it turned out... the 72.5 was the best I could extract from what was on offer)
 
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All I can say is that I have never ever come off a game for anything other than a genuine reason and that game didn't have an observer.
There are referees who are attempting to game the system but I don't see many of them doing particularly well.

@Big Cat what is the average on your pool. Down here an average of 72.5 would put you somewhere near the top of the L4 group and almost a certainty for promotion providing top 50 percent for clubs.
 
JamesL said:
All I can say is that I have never ever come off a game for anything other than a genuine reason and that game didn't have an observer.
There are referees who are attempting to game the system but I don't see many of them doing particularly well.

@Big Cat what is the average on your pool. Down here an average of 72.5 would put you somewhere near the top of the L4 group and almost a certainty for promotion providing top 50 percent for clubs.
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Average here is 72.43
I finished 72.81
All academic though. One thing i noticed was the average crept up steadily over the season. All my reports were before December so I've gradually trickled down the merit table. Either Refs are improving or there's that natural trend for observers to creep their marks North

Also, as my marks were all in 2022, I don't have the advantage of two promotion seasons. If I get off to a good start again next season, I can see the same thing happening again whereby my observations are not spanning the two promo seasons. I may tell the O coordinator to avoid trying to put me in the frame for mid-season because I want my O's to span the two seasons within the season, otherwise I'm not getting two chances
 
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Big Cat said:
Average here is 72.43
I finished 72.81
All academic though. One thing i noticed was the average crept up steadily over the season. All my reports were before December so I've gradually trickled down the merit table. Either Refs are improving or there's that natural trend for observers to creep their marks North
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That's mental.

Average down in the SW is 71.75.
I'm at 72.092 and I'm sat 20th from 80 at the moment!

There's such a disparity between marks across the country it's no wonder there's never been a ref go from L3 -> 2B whilst in Cornwall!
 
Will_A said:
That's mental.

Average down in the SW is 71.75.
I'm at 72.092 and I'm sat 20th from 80 at the moment!

There's such a disparity between marks across the country it's no wonder there's never been a ref go from L3 -> 2B whilst in Cornwall!
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The average should be 70.0
That's what's EXPECTED FFS!!! 🐈
Every League should average the Expected. Regardless of Geography, over a long period of producing Reports, every Observer's average should eventually gravitate to 70.0 IT AINT ROCKET SCIENCE GRRRR
 
Big Cat said:
The average should be 70.0
That's what's EXPECTED FFS!!! 🐈
Every League should average the Expected. Regardless of Geography, over a long period of producing Reports, every Observer's average should eventually gravitate to 70.0 IT AINT ROCKET SCIENCE GRRRR
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I don’t agree that expected=average. Expected would be the standard of performance expected at a level. As I 7 detest and this, the effort has been to make this an objective standard, not one compared o other refs in the league. If the league has a lot of strong refs, then the average should be higher than the “expected” baseline. And if the league has a lot of poor refs, it should be below that line. (It also means that leagues could properly have different averages. Different averages can either mean that one league has better refs or that one league has more generous observers.
 
socal lurker said:
I don’t agree that expected=average. Expected would be the standard of performance expected at a level. As I 7 detest and this, the effort has been to make this an objective standard, not one compared o other refs in the league. If the league has a lot of strong refs, then the average should be higher than the “expected” baseline. And if the league has a lot of poor refs, it should be below that line. (It also means that leagues could properly have different averages. Different averages can either mean that one league has better refs or that one league has more generous observers.
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Law of Big Numbers
Bigger the sample number, closer we get to the expected. Don't actually need a particularly big sample for this to kick in

I used to assess golf handicaps. Once I had 12 sample scores from a player, statistically the handicap could be determined to a very high confidence level. Even 6 scores was something like 90+% confidence as I recall. I wouldn't accept that Leagues with 40+ Refs could possibly be much different from one another in terms of overall Refereeing standards

70.0 being the expected average makes it very clear to everyone what is expected (of the Referee's Level, not the next Level or nonsense like that)
Everyone these days needs their ego massaging with terminology that makes them sound better than they are
 
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