A&H

Communicating for the public/benches.

RobOda

RefChat Addict
Level 3 Referee
Had my first development league fixture as referee - yay, going up in the world! and I was assigned to work with one of the top ref's in the country as my senior assistant. I got plenty of advice from him, which was pretty cool;

One of the bits of advice he gave me was to try and communicate my decisions, especially regarding cautions/sending offs more via body language etc, so that the technical areas and other people would identify the reasoning for the card.

Things like, pointing out the multiple fouls for persistent infringement, or the talking sign for dissent. The idea is it would help calm things down a bit if the coaches etc understand the rationale etc. But, I wonder how else I could improve on this aspect? Are there any go-to signals that can be used for this purpose etc?

Do you guys use this method yourselves? What do you think about this?
 
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I can only think for example if a player is booked for say pulling someones shirt and stopping promising attack you can use the shirt pull gesture.

If player has committed countless fouls then you see a referee point to different areas of the pitch.

If a player is cautioned for an elbow then again you can use an elbow signal.
 
These are an aid to match control. Remember you don't referee to the 2/3 players around you, but to the team officials and spectators so anything which shows your decisions to be make accurate helps.

Do what you feel comfortable with, you don't have to if you feel it would not impact your performance.
 
Do you guys use this method yourselves? What do you think about this?
Absolutely. In most cases the player doesn't really need to be communicated about what he had done. He knows it already. It's others who don't know.

It also helps send the right message across as a preventive toll for further indiscressions. Anyone who does does XYZ will be cautioned but now everyone know what exactly XYZ is.
 
Come off it mate. No matter how hard you try, I'm still going to do it. You are waiting your key stokes. ;)
 
Come off it mate. No matter how hard you try, I'm still going to do it. You are waiting your key stokes. ;)

I suppose with you being foreign, I can't really expect you to be able type Her Majesty's English correctly. :(

Still never mind. What's that saying? "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". :rolleyes: :D:p
 
Do what you feel comfortable with, you don't have to if you feel it would not impact your performance.

Fair enough, I would like to give it a go though. :)

Absolutely. In most cases the player doesn't really need to be communicated about what he had done. He knows it already. It's others who don't know.

Yeah I am finding that to be an issue. It's interesting for me as for the last two seasons I've been encouraged to be more verbal, so I'm improving in that area and talking to the players/offenders but this is obviously something else to add to the manual.

I can only think for example if a player is booked for say pulling someones shirt and stopping promising attack you can use the shirt pull gesture.

If player has committed countless fouls then you see a referee point to different areas of the pitch.

If a player is cautioned for an elbow then again you can use an elbow signal.

These are all good. I'm still trying to think of one for SPA offences that aren't actually bad tackles. Pointing forward to show that the player had a clear(ish) run or something perhaps?
 
Agree with most of the others here. I'm not a particularly loud person, and although I can make myself heard if I direct a shout at someone, I don't think my voice always spreads particularly well. So yeah, for me especially, explaining decisions with body language is important.

As well as explanations, you can also try and give off a general sense of how seriously you judge an offence to be with your whistle and body language. A quick peep and a walk or gentle jog towards the foul tells people that it was nothing worth getting wound up about. On the other end of the scale, loud protracted blast and a quick sprint should tell people that you're taking it seriously - and hopefully stop them trying to level the score before you can dish out punishment.
 
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