With the Statewide Refereeing Conference taking place over the weekend, former Barclays Premier League referee Bobby Madley was in the State to pass on his experience to the Tasmanian referees.
The Englishman presented at the Conference, helping guide the Tasmanian Referee team by covering rule interpretations, maintaining self confidence and offering a wealth of on-field practical advice.
In addition to speaking at the conference, Madley took charge of Friday night's Olympia v Glenorchy Knights game at KGV, working with three of the brightest up and coming local officials in Nathan Coad, Monty Piesse and Matthew Westwood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAu50vCujIM&feature=youtu.be
Madley spoke pregame to how he would be approaching the fixture, insisting that despite it not quite having the luster of a Cup Final at Wembley, that should not change how any referee approached a game.
"Every game as a referee is the same, once the game starts, it doesn't matter if there are 90 people or 90,000 people... it's always nice to referee in a big stadium, but if you're thinking about that during the 90 minutes of football, for me you're in the wrong place. I would prepare for this game just as I would for any other."
Madley said there were a number of key elements and traits that made up a good referee, in particular having confidence, the ability to listen and maintaining thick skin.
"The easy one to throw out is confidence. You have to back yourself as a referee, people will be constantly trying to undermine you and to influence you. Sometimes they're right, and you should always listen as a referee, which is another key skill. You need to believe in yourself, there are a lot of people that will knock you and it can be quite difficult in that sense, to have that thick skin."
Accepting mistakes will happen, but striving to learn from them to better yourself was another key piece of advice he offered up to young referees.
"The goal for any referee should be to go out and get every decision correct... but mistakes will happen.. so you must be prepared to learn from those mistakes, no referee will ever go out and have the perfect game and anyone who tells you they did is a liar. So I will try to learn something from tonight, and take that into my next game."
He observed that the very best referees were capable of maintaining their cool and thinking through incidents in the heat of the moment.
"Much of what we do as a referee is on instinct, so we see something and we give it, then there is an afterthought. So you will see a lot of the time a referee will see it, delay it and then they'll give it. Some will look at that and say the referee was hesitant, but I think the best referees are able to take that half a second just to process what they've seen."
And how does he know if he has done well in a game? Well nobody will be talking about him post game.
"If nobody talks about me after tonight, then I will be delighted, that's always the aim. I've never paid to go into a football game to watch a referee and I wouldn't expect anyone to do that for me, so if they're not noticing me, I will be more than happy with that."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3iQw9uHIaA
Madley also touched on the hot-button issue of the VAR, and spoke to the challenge it has presented English Football with its implementation this year.
"People expected perfection from VAR and they were never going to get it. It's such a monumental change to football, but it is to referees as well. We've got new laws coming in this season which is a big change, to then throw in something like VAR and expect that referees do it perfectly from day 1 is pretty naive.
If suddenly you woke up and the government said now you all have to drive on the right hand side of the road, you still know how to drive, but there will be more accidents, because its something that's a bit new and you're not quite sure of it."
The debate over the video referee's role in Football will continue to rage, but fortunately it's not anything our local officials will have to reckon with anytime soon and thanks to Madley's guidance over the weekend, they will be better prepared for the myriad of other challenges that will inevitably come their way in season 2020.
https://twitter.com/BobbyMadley2/status/1224228123073376258