The event was amazing, no issues of protest or violence, no minor official shortages or problems, no coaches yelling at the bench, none of the usual stumbling blocks at these sorts of events. This was a long weekend in Winnipeg, a traditional date to go and open cottages, so it was really huge that this was pulled off so easily.
There was one referee issue that really annoyed me though. There was a ref who really should not have been there, a guy that NO team wants at any event, ever. He has a strong negative history with our club and it shows up every time he referees us. Above is a picture of the kick-out board the first time he refereed our girls team. It shows 15 major fouls for us against 8 for the other team. That can happen, sure, but what tells the story is the game by game stats. He refereed a second game and it happened again, we were excluded twice for every opponent exclusion. That stands out since the 3 games he did not referee had us with the same number of fouls, or close, to our opponent.
That bias should never exist at this level. I am going to make some effort to ensure that he stops being sent to events outside his province as he gets too many people upset and plays too great a role in influencing game outcomes over the players themselves. I won't use his name as that is not what this blog is about. But I will say that everyone involved knows exactly who the ref is. The majority of refs, who did a great job all weekend, are not the issue!
The dialogue about referees and bias can go on forever. I don't want to do that here as it is best done with data, hard data, from game stats and I will let the referees do that themselves. Peer review is the best method to process this but once in awhile coaches have to vent so I touch on that here.
Very interesting. I'm not one to rag on referees, but my first reaction when looking at the game sheet from the Bushido vs. DDO women's game was to wonder how much of a difference this particular referee made, or if the huge difference in exclusion fouls was legit. I guess I had reason to wonder!
ReplyDeleteChris, You know the personalities well enough to react the way you did and it was correct. It's not ragging on refs to point out a bias that can be measured, I just wish that there was a measurement by the officials and it didn't have to be clubs doing it. In the DDO game their first 3 goals were off his kick-outs and even though we got a couple of natural goals during that quarter it was clear to the players what was going to happen for the whole game.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago when these girls were 16&U we beat the same DDO team 9-3 at nationals. While they may have improved and gained confidence they have not pulled that far ahead.