Hoops

Refereeing in SA

Graeme, SEABL last year had a change of direction with a new referee commissioner and a new approach to feedback via DVD. It from my limited knowledge league rules that clubs had to have game DVD to the office by wednesday so that the commissioner could review and referees could request copies.

Not every league is like that. As you start to go down the levels the harder it is to get copies. But visual feedback is the best vehicle for coaching. BUt unfortunately most clubs only worry about themselves rather than supplying DVD for referee education. Thus even harder at junior panel and almost impossible at domestic level.

The bottom line across the country is that until more resources are applied to referee and referee coach education the level of overall improvement will be minimal.

Not Diggity - Plus you dont learn or improve by doing more games. Especially when yo are not being coached at all for most if not all of those games.

The the answer is BASA allocating more resources to referee coaching so that there are more ref coaches assessing.

A referee can watch video, do rules analysis and run until they are blue in the face but until they get into a game situation under game pressure under fatigue they are not going to know how they will react! It's not like a player who can shoot 300 shots a day or run and offence. A ref needs to ref to practice, experience game situations and learn from their mistakes.

How players and referees learn and train are totally different.

NO diggity people have been stating one of the problems is lack of pay. So now you want them to do all this:

By doing running work.

By going over rules interpritations to improve consistancy.

By watching video of their/other peoples games and assessing it.


Probably for the same pay. Referees pass a fitness test yearly.
They due a rules exam yearly.
The ability to get video of games other than NBL on oneHD or WNBL from ABC is just about minimal from ABA leagues etc.

Maybe if more resources were allocated this might have a snow flakes hope in hell.

bring back the penguin

Missed out..............How do ref's practice? Other than reffing games?

A simple " from where I was standing and in the split second I had to make the call, that is the decision that I thought was right" should suffice for most calls unless the referee is making blatent interpretation errors.

In hindsight, with a chance to think about a decision, it is quite possible to think that perhaps a call shouldnt have been made or alternatively made the other way, ie block/charge, out of bounds off hands, etc.

These days, I referee point sparring at Martial Arts Tournaments at a National level, and it is no different. It is still a subjective decision to call something, but at least there is a review option as it is a majority decision by the three refs. However, there are still people 10 - 15 metres away in the crowd who seem to have a better view of the action than the refs about 1.5 - 2 metres away.

You cannot please all the people all the time and there is no way a video review can be held after every whistle which some people seem to expect.

Tree will be Trees.
It is good to hear that Al doesn't bitch at the refs while playing- he must use all his comments for the refs while coaching.
Having said that, it is great to see guys like him giving something back to the sport.

What would be considered "Fair and reasonable" to pay a ref?