Local womens football (incl. W League)

Developing Female football in the capital. ;).   

Parapine ITM Upper Hutt City 10 Wairarapa Nil
Wellington Utd 2 P Nth Marist 2.

Just want to comment on some of the refereeing from last weekend.

I'm involved with the VUWAFC women's coaching team and our 1st team (Prems) game on Sunday was refereed by a kid who had never refereed a game before.

He didn't blow his whistle one, changed calls based on appeals, ended the first half after 40 min (and when notified of this called everyone out for another 5mins of play). Offsides were not enforced at all and players from both sides were deliberately abusing this. It got to the point that the players were ignoring him and making their own calls.

Women's competitive football is NOT the place to be trying out trainee refs and I thought this was really, really poor from Capital Football. Nothing unexpected though!

I did feel bad for the dude because he was clearly well out of his depth - he should never have been there and it blighted what was otherwise a good game of football.

Have you written to Capital Football and Jamie Cross about this? 

Jamie is pretty good at assigning referees and I had a look and the referee was also assigned an assessor so they will get feedback about what they did wrong and will hopefully improve. 

Unfortunately its a case of where do they start new referees? They have to learn 'on the job' somewhere and normally the lower women's and U17 are where they get their first games, then it is normally the lower mens grades as well.

Yeah our 1st team coach and the Western Suburbs coach have both submitted feedback and there was an assessor present.

Where do they start new refs? Certainly not Women's Prems for their first ever game, and especially not the top team in the grade - that's fudgeing ridiculous. If its the first time he's picking up a whistle (which the assessor said it was) it should be a training game or kids.

After the abuse he copped I imagine his confidence is absolutely shot and Capital Football should never have put him in that situation. Its all well and good that Jamie Cross is "pretty good" but the ball has been dropped here - big time. I've said many times that a refs performance is the worst I've ever seen but I don't think I'll be saying that ever again.

Thing is we don't have "training games" to practise on. Another thing is, the Women's Prems grade is struggling to get referees each week to fill it, this game wasn't assigned on Friday so it may well be that he was thrown in the deep end. He may have put his hand up to do it too as Jamie put out a call asking for referees for the game. 

This is a bigger problem of not having enough referees, I remember there being referees to cover all the women's game and Men's down to grade 5. Now Grades 3-4 and Women's Prem are starting to get lucky to even have refs.

Surely its not too difficult to reach out to a club and ask if they can try a ref out in their training games or in preseason? I get that there's an issue with ref numbers but I'd have much rathered have done that game myself. There needs to be some sort of vetting before that. No ref would have been orders of magnitude better than that farce.

I disagree that an inexperienced referee shouldn't be assigned to a game just because the top team in the grade happens to be playing. It shouldn't matter which teams are playing. If you were fighting to avoid relegation you wouldn't want to be getting an inexperienced referee either.

I realise you and Yakcall are both refs and therefore are sensitive about this sort of thing but its not good enough. End of.

I have said everything about it I will say here as I'm too close to the subject being a referee myself but I think this thread should get back on topic of women's football and if you want to get into a discussion around referees and when a newbie should be used, please take it to here https://www.yellowfever.co.nz/categories/regional-...

That's fair. It shouldn't be prems either way. At that level, if the choices are no ref or a ref that has never done a game, the choice is obvious, especially since the girls do play without refs often and each team usually has a coach who is a competent referee.

..

How many grades deep do they give refs to in men's football if women's prem can't get any?

I'd hope no lower than Cap Prem (second tier)?

That would be fair, but we know that doesn't happen, also referees may not select to work on the Sunday when Women's Prem is. I only do Saturday games so as to keep my Sunday free for family and other stuff and a lot of other referees are the same.

shambles

Just to point out, this is correct thing to do, as per the laws, based on his initial mistake.

The reality is that we are very short on refs. In general the W League, Central League, and most of Cap Prem Mens get Ref + 2ARs. . Cap Premiere Mens & Womans, Cap 1-3, some Under 17s, and the top grades of 13th and 14th get referees only.

Ref'ing a game without ARs is a thankless task at the best of times. Mistakes will always been made, even by experienced refs when it comes to offside calls.

Isn't it even worse if Women's Prem is a different day - they can't find 4 (or is it 5?) solid refs with no or one men's prem game on?

A reasonable amount of refs do the men's Sunday league instead.

are they CF refs?

I'm not 100% but I believe so. I don't play a high enough grade to get refs in mens so nothing to compare it to.

I have never seen Sunday league - but a bit crap if CF trained refs are choosing that comp over CF comps

Are you really begrudging them playing, a day after they volunteer their time to ref?

playing or reffing? 

Are you really begrudging them a day of paid work a day after volunteering their time to ref?

Either way really.  Refs renumeration is less than minimum wage all up, and more abuse than a counter person at Macca's.

You also have referees who don't like and want to referee women's football too, why you see the same referees each time refereeing their games!

Dunno. Maybe. CF spend $ training them up - maybe their needs trump Morrison's. 

CF train them up, they volunteer their time to referee. Don't think CF are in much of a position to demand these people's time. 

but should they be allowed to referee a competing competition? 

btw try and have your own opinion and look at the big picture of CF as an organisation

Referees can do what they want, they don't get paid to train they do all that on their own time like the meetings etc. Though if you get the higher levels then that is paid for (Level refereeing badge courses). Then we get reimbursement for our games and how much depends on the level they do, I think from what I have heard, Sunday league pays more than a referee that does a capital football game by themselves pays. 

No contract will be signed stopping them from doing another competition. 

Do you think (m)any of these volunteers would sign an exclusivity commitment to CF on their current dispersement rates?

yes

I'm sure there a range of reasons people volunteer to ref at a local level, most are just asking to be not out of pocket on fuel, etc to do so.

Personally, I would stop volunteering, rather than turn something I do into a contractually limiting exercise, that might prevent me ref'ing a game at a club youth tournament, that falls outside the scope of a "CF competition".

good luck with that then pal

anywho moving on to the actual point here..

Do you think an unwaged Vic Uni women's player paying $300 a season to play is going to happy about the weekends events? Or say sweet as it was just another 'unfortunate' event as Yakcall puts it? Tony M was probably there handing out flyers afterwards...

What about ones that referee college sport, you can't make people sign an exclusively contract when they are volunteering their time. Sure we get payment but that isn't a wage that is a reimbursement and isn't enough to keep people on and tell them what they can and can't do. You would find some referees would walk if told they had to sign one. 

We have a genuine shortage of people willing to ref. They have to start somewhere. All refs will make mistakes, even experienced ones. I'm not sure that chasing away a volunteer who is donating his time to local footballing community benefits anyone.

Referring with out ARs is a thankless task, and mistakes will be made in this area in every game. I saw a u17 match at the weekend where a very experienced local ref missed a goal decision. Not because he was wrong, bad or otherwise, just because he can only give what he sees.

What we need is more refs and ARs, not criticism of those who give up their time to benefit others.

Ok then Greenie, what do you suggest happens? There is a referee shortage and a training issue, how do you fix it?