Hoops

Quality of Refereeing in SA

hi all, first time here, this caught my attention, had to give my opinion. I am a coach at a small districts club, and have found the umpiring in alot of the stadiums really bad. i dont really want to pick on 1 particular place, but my team shudders at the thought of going to pasadena and port adelaide. i have very little good to say about MOST refs there, we find most of them biased and inconsistent. before you all start having a go at me, i have started umpiring social and hope soon to do junior basa games, i also play socially. my big concern is kids umpiring their own age group/division or club. your mentality level should be higher than those you umpire eg.dont be 14 umpiring u14. to be really truthful, i'm really sick of the umpiring here, its disheartening for everyone. best place we have been umpired was at starplex by a guy named wayne. well done. well, thats my opinion anyway.!

Thankyou incognito, i mighy one day when the basketball situation here in SA is correctly organised and not the circus that it is.
I am currently studying for a degree in Sport and Recreation (Administration and Management) so watch people cuz in a few yrs it will be revamped!
oh and yogee give pasadena a call, we would love refs who wanna have a go, start at social level and work u r way back in it.

I was a referee who started out at out at miniball level and was willing to move on to higher stages. Even at one stage had aspirations to make it to WNBL level.
As the years went by, i umpired district regularly on saturday mornings and sometimes on friday nights depending on when my game was.
Yet, it was the coaches and parents who stopped my career short, after being both mentally (and physically, yes true) abused. it was was not worth $6.50, $7.00 that i was being paid to be there.
I am still refereeing social and stil i get abused, but enjoy it mostly at the end of the day. I also play district, both seniors and junior div 1 level.
Just be mindful that umpires are there for ur benefit and not there own. Be grateful that u have someone controlling ur game. I would love to see some of the loud mouthed people umpire their own game if umpires decided to strike ;)

Harold - Jirachi will correct me on this, but I thought it was illegal for players to actually question a refs decision and ask about the interpretation - techincally, anyhow, according to zero tolerance.

Perhaps what nall is saying Jirachi is that the he/she believes that the regular reffing at Morphett Vale, Marion, and Hillcrest is the worst.

there are regular panel training days - flyers / emails are sent out with the monthly rosters.

A lot of getting together and updates rest with the head referee for that stadium when the umpire is rostered on.

When you get to the higher grades of referees there is no "getting together" just for finals - you are expected to "get together" several times during the season. ie panel days.

One issue that is worth comment is that I feel it is not bias that a home team has - but a better "understanding" with their local or regular refs. The home teams often are being refereed by a regular group of umpires - who apply their interpretation of the rules - so they know what makes that particular referee "tick" - they find out what that ref will reward and penalize.

If I was interested in returning to refereeing (I reffed back when I was 15/16 at St Bernards before it got shut down the first time), with the view to reffing district, who do I approach? Is it worth it?

With the Club Guru program, I need to participate in at least 60 hours of 'officiating', or whatever it is.

There is nothing for Level 0 refs at all.

I havent even had communication from the State Refs director for at least 2 (maybe 3 years), even though I have sent off emails on a regular basis asking to move on to Level 1, and get some District games.

Hopefully, I can recover from ym health and illness problems and come out of retirement, BUT, the abuse is one thing that I am not missing.

Fair enough - I just wanted tomake sure people were actually TRAINED when they came through to the junior district system - saw an intersting flyer up at MARS today - the local Church league is having a "referees get-together" before the finals to go over interpretations and rules and stuff like that - anything like that ever happen in the District comp?

there is clear manipulation of junior refs by adults or basketball names in Adelaide.

Certain behaviours are inherent to each stadium by core referees.

You can only hope that the habits cultured are positive ones for basketball.

I believe a junior ref - ie child - should not umpire any age groups older than themselves.

there is too much manipulation of a threatening nature to the junior refs. However - if you have an 11 yo level o ref doing an u16 game - they do not have the "life" experience or confidence to cope.

I say keep the 12 yo refs doing u10s and u12s.

if we had enough refs we could maitain better standards - ie only level 2s upwards to do Div 1 juniors etc.

More monitoring of junior referees needs to occur - players train twice a week - drive kms for a game - sometimes to be let down by the poor refeering.

it a ref is consitently poor it is critical that issue is addressed.

Referees should be regionalized and rostered through a pool of stadiums to avoid any bias allegations. However if any individual is prone to bias - no matter what you do they will keep that habit.

I will ask this question. How many of you whinging about refs are an accredited ref yourself??

If you have said no to that first question, when was the last time you enquired about doing a referee's course, or even offered to ref a couple of games at your social comp?

If you answered no, or never to both, do you think you REALLY have a right to criticise the refs?

I referee'd for 5 years, only at social (I did a couple of district junior games), and have just retired within the last month due to injury and illness.

6'4 T.Harvey(I)/6’1 E.Naar
6’5 J.Simon(I)/6’7 J.Jessup(NS)/6’2 I.White
6’7 D.Adel/6’8 D.Deng
6’8 V.Jois/6’6 M.Darling
6’9 C.Bairstow/6’11 S.Froling

Grida May pushout white or deng