What does Stuart Cummings do at the RFL?

[cpwigan]

In terms of referees what is the breakdown for Wigan RLFC

You know my view, I rate all referees the same.

However, I am led to believe that Ganson and Klein are rated No 1 / 2 by Stuart Cummings. Ganson publicly stated that he was when discussing the hometown / referee dilemna and the appointments for many major matches support this.

If you are a F/T referee you should have reached the required standard to officiate any SL match. The difference should be negligible.

[robjoenz]

cpwigan posted:
If you are a F/T referee you should have reached the required standard to officiate any SL match. The difference should be negligible.

Experience is the major difference between the most senior, Ganson, and the most junior, Thaler. With experience comes ability to deal with different situations.

Then you've got form. If a referee has had a poor run of form he'll not get the Leeds -v- Bradford or Wigan -v- Saints game. Similarly, the most inform referee got the cup finals.

[cpwigan]

So on that basis the inexperienced referee is always going to be inferior. Sorry I disagree. Experience is relative. One person can learn and develop more in 1 year than another person could do in 5 years.

[robjoenz]

cpwigan posted:
So on that basis the inexperienced referee is always going to be inferior. Sorry I disagree. Experience is relative. One person can learn and develop more in 1 year than another person could do in 5 years.

You always do this, Allan, you've focused on one point and leapt to a conclusion.

Referee's, like players, have different attributes. Experience comes at a price, usually fitness. Like you say people can develop at different rates, some develop slower but will develop further in the long run. Each fulltime referee isn't the same.

[cpwigan]

Sometimes you have to go full circle

We have reached a point where you state all referees are not the same. I totally agree and that was my original point and remains so.

Namely, to compare the relative discipline of SL teams necessitates parity or as close as you can get in terms of the distribution of referees. If a team had a Bill Harrigan style referee for 6 matches and another team had a Steve Ganson style referee for 6 matches we both know the team conceding the least penalties would not / could not be attributed to relative discipline. The figures obtained would be worthless.

Academically if you test something you have to be very careful when doing so. As I see it you could analyse how each club fared in their last 6 matches under each referee. Even then you would have to factor in home or away. It is a known fact that referees favour home teams.

[Mike]

All very interesting, but I'd still like someone (you know who you are ) to address my points on the communication and training issues I raised back at the bottom of page 2

[robjoenz]

cpwigan posted:
Sometimes you have to go full circle

We have reached a point where you state all referees are not the same. I totally agree and that was my original point and remains so.

So why try arguing the opposite? :doz:

Namely, to compare the relative discipline of SL teams necessitates parity or as close as you can get in terms of the distribution of referees. If a team had a Bill Harrigan style referee for 6 matches and another team had a Steve Ganson style referee for 6 matches we both know the team conceding the least penalties would not / could not be attributed to relative discipline. The figures obtained would be worthless.

Academically if you test something you have to be very careful when doing so. As I see it you could analyse how each club fared in their last 6 matches under each referee. Even then you would have to factor in home or away.

Similarly, to compare the types of penalty given by individual referees is worthless because they have all officiated different games on different days, under different conditions with different situations.

It is a known fact that referees favour home teams.

No... that's just one of your several little hobby horses you seem to obsess about

You must be the only person I know who would suggest Wigan were favoured by the referee in their 13 games at the JJB last season.

[gpartin]

I think consistency and new interpretations in the early part of the season are the major issues with refereeing. I think the 'refs-out-to-get-us' mentality is totally flawed but sadly the mentality of the majority of fans in SL. I remember years ago when the rule about having your hand on the floor at the play the ball was brought in. We played saints and although they were blatantly pulling our attacking players forward we were penalised about 6 or 7 times and it spoiled the game. Things pretty much got back to normal following that. The RFL seem to go gung ho early on with new rules and then they are enforced inconsistently for the remainder of the season.

Incidentally Rob what is the logic behind the rule whereby you are allowed to take a quick tap if you catch the ball on the full, behind your own line, but you have to wait til the defence is back before you can take a tap penalty?

[robjoenz]

Sorry, Mike... that one got lost on the page cross-over.

Mike posted:
If requests from coaches is what caused the mess last season - and everyone is happy that that should be the driving factor in rule changes, then I would suggest that the problem lies in the processes in place to make these changes. It was a ridiculous and highly embaressing start to the season. What is required is the director of referees to trawl through footage of games finding examples of where any new rule interpretation should be applied and an equal number where it shouldn't. These videos should be used as part of the referee training program - which I'm sure happens already, although you can't tell based on the consistency of the onfield descisions - but it is crucial that the coaches are invited to a review session where they are shown the video and told what the new interpretation is going to be. Its at this stage that obvious problems will be revealed, so it can't have happened last season. Memos etc are simply not sufficient.

The match officials department have this awesome database (I think it's compiled by Opta) whereby they can filter of list of incidents, whether they be tries, penalties for high shots, knock-ons, offside penalties, etc. They use these for training purposes.

I can't remember whether it's the coaches or the chairmen who meet to agree rule changes. I have a feeling it may be the chairmen because they are the people who run the clubs. It would make more sense to speak to the coaches, I suppose the good chairmen consult their coaches.

I don't see any major issues with consistency. There is always room for improvement but the only way to get complete consistency is to operate zero tolerance but that would destroy the game.

I would like to see every decision (including non-decision) in every SL match being reviewed and critiqued by all of the referees after each round. These reviews should be performed in an atmosphere of no-fault - i.e. without any implication of performance evaluation. Things to highlight should be consistency of decision making between officials in different games and consistency of the interpretation. The goal is for all official to get used to a consistent ruling for all descisions. On top of this, each week the director should choose a specific ruling produce a video review of recent decisions, consistent and inconsistent, for the panel to also discuss.

From international level right down to academy & summer conference rugby the referee is given a DVD of the game. Different referees review their games in different ways. I asked one fulltimer for advice on how to review games, he suggested sitting at the computer watching the DVD with an excel file open; the minute in column 1 and comments in column 2. The comments may positive, something a different angle might have made you do different or something that could have been picked up on that wasn't. From several match reviews you come up with your strengths and areas for improvements. From that you aim to improve over subsequent games.

Rob: I hope you are going to tell me that all of this is already done. If it is, I hope that we will start to see the benefits shortly, because it ain't happening yet. You only have to look at american sports to see what standard of refereeing is possible.

I can't say I really know an awful lot about American sports. From what I've seen of American Football there don't seem to be many rules to implement (the amount of obstruction and forward passes!) and baseball looks pretty straight forward. Could it be that our game has a lot more grey areas and areas that require referee interpretation?

[robjoenz]

The RFL seem to go gung ho early on with new rules and then they are enforced inconsistently for the remainder of the season.

I don't think it's inconsistency, it's that they are enforced applying common sense rather than giving everything with the slightest hint of an infringement.

From my 'debates' with spectators at matches I have noticed that speccies, as a whole, look at things in a very black and white manner and leaning very much towards their own side. When a player from their team is penalised for climbing over the ruck to get square he's doing his utmost to get out of the way. Yet, when the same player drops the ball as he gets up to play unchallenged it it's the fault of the tackler for not clearing the ruck quickly enough.

If you look at slowing down the play-the-ball there are undoubtably more than one thing going on. Do you recall Fielden getting sin-binned at Leeds in the league? Thackray had Fielden's arm between his body and his own arm. Fielden, however, milked it and made no attempt to remove his arm from the ruck and having been warned, was sin-binned. The referee had to decide which player was taking the mickey the most. On watching the replay Fielden made no attempt to move his arm so Silverwood probably made the right decision, how many Wigan fans will agree with that though?

gpartin posted:
Incidentally Rob what is the logic behind the rule whereby you are allowed to take a quick tap if you catch the ball on the full, behind your own line, but you have to wait til the defence is back before you can take a tap penalty?

Where've you heard that one?

You can take a quick 20 m restart if you're team is onside and you are in the middle of the 20 m line (unless you have Aussies playing because they don't like them).

Tap penalties are taken as soon as the referee sets the mark. If he needs to administer a warning then there's be a delay in setting the mark.