“I never wanted to see that person again”, Alain Rolland told his audience last Saturday morning. He’d said that in 2008 after watching his own performance taking charge of England vs New Zealand in a messy Autumn international. And he wasn’t happy with what he saw.

On a bright, crisp Saturday morning at the Irish Sports HQ in Abbotstown he’d shown clips from that match to his audience, a crowd comprising around 50 referees from across the sporting spectrum (with some fellow hacksⁱ lurking at the back), and had asked them to tell him what they thought.

You’d backed yourself into a corner with what you said early on, said one. Rolland nodded. He’d said the equivalent of “do it again and you’re off”, leaving himself no other options.

Your body language was terrible. Rolland agreed.

You looked pissed off.

“I was!”

At that time in 2008 Rolland had already refereed a World Cup final. But until that game at Twickenham he said he’d never had to face a match where one team had arrived wanting to play rugby while the other simply did not. That in itself wasn’t necessarily a problem; the thing that had got Rolland into trouble was that he didn’t have a plan for dealing with it. Later he’d show clips from another game later in his career, one where he’d used some different techniques to keep both himself and the match from getting out of hand.

 

Referee Conference

Rolland’s talk was titled Disciplines of Decision Making, one of seven sessions at the 2015 Referee Conference. The event was the brainchild of Galway soccer referee Conor Fitzgerald, who had tumbled to the notion that within a fairly short drive of Dublin there were a good number of top drawer referees from multiple sports. He said he’d targeted 25 delegates, so 50 was greatⁱⁱ. And with the 2015 conference now safely under the belt he wants to grow it again in 2016.

Along with Rolland there were experienced officials like All Ireland referees David Goldrick (football) and Barry Kelly (hurling), along with Mark Halsey (Premier League) and Ian Stokes (FAI). And a motivational speaker, and a psychologist. And a conference host for the day’s proceedings: Rob Hartnett of Sport for Business.

 

Goal Setting

To begin the day Fitzgerald had enlisted motivational speaker Gerry Duffy who gave a talk on goal-setting for the modern referee.

“Success leaves clues”, Duffy repeated throughout his hour at the front of the room, dropping his voice almost to a whisper at times as if sharing a secret with a co-conspirator. His use of powerpoint was excellent, going down a minimalist route rather than bombarding an audience with slides.

Key points:

• Learn from how others have achieved success
• Be prepared to get uncomfortable
• Be willing to ask for help
• Write down your goals, visualise them, reconnect with them every week

And finally, make sure that every game is prepared for and refereed to the best of ones ability. Even that under 12 match can teach something. You never know where a big break might come from, so each piece of work you do deserves your complete respect.

 

Preparation, Planning, Process

Back to Rolland. The former Irish rugby international’s talk was big on preparation, planning and having processes in place that could be relied upon as a referee. “You can’t make it up when you’re out there” he told the assembled whistlers. “You have to be prepared for this”.

As a speaker Rolland’s use of video was particularly good, serving to both engage and illustrate. Example clips were shown from Wales v South Africa (when he sin binned props from both teams for messing at the scrum), Clermont vs Leicester (to illustrate the process of ensuring a second foul play incident is not lost due to a mistaken presumption) and of course that match from Twickenham.

In a panel discussion earlier with Ian Stokes and David Goldrick, Rolland had said some referees seem to think that when they’re picked to officiate at a higher level they should somehow do things differently. This is all wrong, he said. They should go out and referee normally, referee in the manner that got them chosen in the first place. He said that when he was preparing to referee the 2007 World Cup final, the match was due to kick off at 9pm local time. In order to stick to his usual pre-match routine this meant that he should sleep between 2pm and 5pm.

Stick to the routine, it’s what got you there.

 

Highs and Lows

David Goldrick refereed the 2007 and 2010 All Ireland football finals. He talked about the highs and lows of the job at the top level. Being picked for big games has obviously meant he’s doing something right, and according to Goldrick they don’t get tougher than refereeing in Clones in the Ulster championship. Those games can make you or break you, he told the crowd. They just somehow have an extra intensity.

Those big games, including his All Ireland Finals and International Rules appointments, are obvious highs. But he also talked about a couple of lows. The famous non-decision in Croke Park in 2013 as Dublin played Cork, for example. He just hadn’t seen the player make that illegal touch in the parallelogram. Was he in a bad position? He didn’t think so, but ultimately because he couldn’t see it, then he wasn’t in the very best position. Lesson? Work on his angled running.

Goldrick said it was important to him to hold his hands up when he got a decision wrong, to show that the mistake could be recognised before learning from it.

Tyrone v Down in the 2014 Ulster Championship was another moment which Goldrick described as a low. This one wasn’t to do with positioning; he saw the incident just fine, awarding a penalty after the attacker was dragged down.

But he never showed a card.

Away from the GAA field Goldrick earns a living as an actuary with Irish Life. That week had been particularly hectic in the buildup to the game. He described it as a mental fitness issue; his mind just went blank after awarding the penalty and never adjudicated on the foulⁱⁱⁱ.

 

 

The Day Job

That would not be the only time the day job would be mentioned. People used to assume that Alain Rolland was a full time professional referee, he said, whereas he’d always maintained his non-rugby career. He viewed his part time status as a positive; some people might have golf at the weekend, he had refereeing.

Barry Kelly, referee of four All Ireland hurling finals, said his job as a secondary school teacher had positives and negatives when it came to his refereeing career. Given the nature of the job he interacts with lots of people every day; he said this was beneficial when compared to somebody who might work in a job with relatively little human contact. But there have been times when he’s noticed himself acting like a schoolteacher when on the pitch.

Ian Stokes, now working in a referee development role within the FAI, said that a referee needs to “surround yourself with a bubble of invincibility” in order to be able to make the best decisions they can. This refers to anything else that might distract from that, including what be happening in work.

 

Fitness. And Fitness.

I lost count of the number of times fitness was mentioned on the day, with speaker after speaker saying that physical tiredness leads to poor decision making. Knowledge of the laws must be taken as a given, but without the fitness and positioning skill to enable one to see the game from the optimal angles all that knowledge can be rendered useless. You can only make a decision if you can see it.

 

Cancer and Recovery

Former premier league referee Mark Halsey was there to talk about recovering from cancer to return to referee in the top flight again. Halsey was diagnosed with cancer a couple of days before the start of the 2009/10 season, just months after his wife had been diagnosed with leukaemia. He said he’d heard the news on the Thursday and was told he needed to come in for an operation to remove a tumour in his throat on the following Monday. Thing was, Halsey was due to referee Everton vs Arsenal on the Saturday as well as being fourth official at both Sunderland vs Chelsea and Burnley vs Manchester United on the following Tuesday and Wednesday.

He rang the league office to explain that he wouldn’t be able to do either the Tuesday or Wednesday games. They were great about it, he said, after he told them why. But he was determined to referee that Saturday match.

“In the honesty of hindsight, I never should have done it”, he’d say in his book with Ian Ridley. But at the time he was all too aware that it could be his last game. He said he’d told his officiating colleagues before the match that he had cancer, and he’d need their help like never before. Halsey got through that day’s battle as well as the greater battle that was to come. And he ultimately got back to referee at the top level again, to remain “part of the 21st team of the premier league”.

 

Focus and Concentration

The day’s final presentation was on concentration and staying focused. Given by Professor Aidan Moran from UCD, this was time very well spent. “Sport is played with the body but won (mainly) in the mind”, said Moran. And in his view this applied equally to athletes and umpires (his catch-all word for the various officials in the room).

Moran described a model called ACT:

A = Attitude

C = Concentration

T = Thinking constructively

The professor spoke about concentration and gave the audience glimpses of various tools that could be used to help keep that concentration focused. Former England rugby captain Martin Corry used to like to switch off the dressing room lights before heading onto the field, said Moran, in order to send a signal that preparation was now complete and they were entering a different place.

Restructuring (breaking down a match into smaller components), Routines, Goals, Trigger Words and Visualisation were all discussed in brief, culminating in a quote from Ronan O’Gara that Professor Moran found particularly insightful. It’s from 2006, as told to Alan English when writing his book on Munster’s first Heineken Cup success. It’s about a crucial kick in the final, and Moran said that when he reads that quote he notices at least four of those concentration techniques he’d previously outlined.

“It was obvious how important it was, but I just had to get into my routine and block everything else out. Usually there’s a mark in the centre of the crossbar and I focus on that. Thomond Park has a black dot, at Lansdowne Road it’s green. I imagine a little hoop between the sticks, like a gymnasium hoop, and I picture the ball going through that. I stepped back and the buzz words in my head were, ‘Stay tall and follow through.’ ”

 

Headshrinker

I enjoyed the day. The conference was a learning opportunity, a chance to have a peek inside the heads of referees as they speak about their craft. My father did some whistling in both rugby and soccer, so I’ve probably always had a sports legal eagle sitting on the shoulder since a young age. Too often one sees things written about officials that are based upon little more than ignorance, assumption and pantomime. And I’m sure I’ve been guilty of that myself^iv.

At the top level it’s a career, a profession. And at the lower levels where there are no TMOs, no linesmen and precious little support it might quite accurately be deemed a calling.

That demands our respect, and our curiosity.

 

Photo Credits: www.refereeconference.com