This may not be as true now as it was two years ago, but broadly speaking we know most people in the UK scene, and I'm going to argue that in some ways, it is harming our referees' ability to grow and improve, and also to do their jobs. Going to World Cup only made the issues clearer to me, going from refereeing teams I know well to refereeing teams and players I've barely heard of, if at all.
There have (rightly) been many comments floating around that a lot of referees in quidditch do not accept criticism, even constructive. This is a big topic and one for continuing another week, but I think the dissonance with how referees are perceived and how they feel they are perceived is important and I will discuss that part here. In general, accepting criticism can be hard - it is certainly something I have struggled with personally in the past, aside from on the quidditch pitch. From my experience of confronting this issue, I think that the main reason the refereeing community ignores criticism is to protect themselves. It can be a defense mechanism, in situations where differentiating between destructive and constructive criticism can be stressful. For referees, this could translate to finding it easier to just ignore everything coming from your peers rather than dealing with reading and overcoming destructive criticism whilst trying to identify what you can actually use and learn from. I do not think this is the most helpful path, however I can understand why many do it.
Kevin Oelze accurately describes an aspect of this in his Eighth Man article - 'if you referee them, you get the amazing side benefit of publicly watching your friends and anyone with an opinion absolutely ripping into your refereeing for which you got paid (maybe) minimum wage'. I definitely agree with Oelze's quote. It's very hard as a person to see my peers slam my performance in black and white in a way they'd rarely do when I'm playing for my team. Sure, you might tell someone they were off their game, but that's nowhere near the complete trashing some referees are given - directly, anonymously, or otherwise - after some games. The ratio of constructive to destructive criticism given to referees can often feel heavily skewed towards destructive, especially on social media and when referees are discussed as a whole. The negative attitude is discouraging in itself, but this is exacerbated when it is coming from people you consider to be friends. As someone with an anxiety disorder, I may be more prone to assuming the worst and assuming that everyone thinks I'm terrible, but I can't imagine that it's easy for anyone to ignore that niggling voice in your head which tells you to just give up on this thing you are clearly bad at. (For clarification, I don't actually think I'm a bad referee. I have a pretty decent sized refereeing ego. But still a person worries from time to time.) Referees have a far lower return rate from season to season compared to players, and whilst I'm sure it just really isn't for some people, I'd be willing to bet that decent referees have been 'forced' out of that aspect of quidditch due to the general attitude of players towards them. New referees especially feel they should quit rather than work to improve.
All of this leads to the first point I made at the beginning - hindering the ability of referees to improve. Everyone starts of as an unspectacular referee, with many flaws and areas in need of (sometimes vast) improvement. The top referees in the country still have work to do, as the rulebook changes and as teams evolve the way the game is played. Improvement comes from feedback, with honest and respectful criticisms, so you can analyse the weak points and pay attention to them in later games. But if most of what you hear about refereeing is negative and destructive, it can be wearying to find the small amounts of helpful information, and you may not even bother trying after a while. The refereeing community as a whole has taken this attitude, and although there are individuals who work hard and take feedback well, the culture is not of improvement as a response to criticism. I feel that this is because there is a loud player-base that feels very strongly about how games should be refereed (usually more or less like a mainstream sport of their choice), who usually speak with no experience of refereeing quidditch. A lot of the time their defense is that fans of said other sport speak similarly about referees there - but how many Premier League referees read the Facebook discussions of fans, or even hear the locker room discussions of players? This is the key difference: referees are almost always players, almost always your direct peers, and will therefore have a different reaction to your words.
As a head referee, I am one of a small percentage of the UK quidditch community who is paid to be on the pitch. It is a job, and even when I am assistant refereeing or otherwise I consider it so. This is different to most teams (with a probable exception of Team UK), where they want to do well, but there is no external expectation on them to perform at their highest level and the one thing pushing them on is internal pride, not a sense of owing the community anything. But whilst Team UK are boosted by the words of the community, which are >99% positive as far as I have seen, the referees do not get that luxury.
Like a lot of people, I have friends on many different quidditch teams. I've drunk absinthe with Keele, I've been to many pubs with Loughborough, I've learnt about the secret Falmouth scout hut rituals. But on the pitch, I'm not supposed to be your friend. I'm an official, I'm impartial, I am there to make sure a good game of quidditch happens for all parties. However, this is hard when automatically, your brain wants to chat away to your friends and maybe only give them a slap on the wrist when they should be sent to the naughty step. Fixing this attitude will take work from both players and referees. This is one of the minor issues caused by the closeness of the community, but a far bigger problem is when this turns into bias, even unconscious, for or against the teams and players on pitch.
As a referee, you are supposed to go into every game with no preconceptions about the players or teams you are about to officiate. This is to make sure you don't base calls on assumptions, such as being more harsh on a player from a team known for playing dirty, or let someone off lightly because 'well usually they're okay'. However, this is impossible in quidditch in the UK right now. Even if you haven't met a team or seen a player, word can travel quickly - usually through facebook. Most people could name at least five players they would instinctively watch for contact from, and as a referee this is bad. It's unfair on the players in question - everyone on pitch should be treated equally and no assumptions should be made about who might be making illegal plays. There's also another effect: some referees may overcompensate for the fact that they are friends with certain people, and thus treat them more harshly because they don't want to look like they are playing favourites. This also isn't fair on those players, who wouldn't receive such a harsh penalty from a different referee who wasn't trying to prove a point.
If I'm going to referee say, Liverpuddly Cannons vs Manchester Manticores, it might be easier because I don't know much about either team. I can go in with no idea who's going to win, who's going to score the hoops, and who is going to make me get my cards out. But as soon as I'm refereeing well-established teams it's an entirely different matter. And it's not only the fact that I know who they are - they also know me. I should clarify here that by well-established I'm assuming that I know a core of the team pretty well; Team USA is better established than the majority of UK teams but I certainly don't know any of them well enough to consider myself at risk of being biased due to knowing them socially. But in the UK, if you've been around a season, I probably know who you are and what you're going to be like on pitch. To answer the question I posed at the beginning of the paragraph, I'm not sure. I have a few ideas that I'll pitch later, but there isn't a good solid answer.
When I referee, I know I try to remain personable. Part of this is a defense against being seen as overly bossy or angry - see my article on sexism in refereeing for more details on that. However, I have to make sure that even when I'm doing this, I do not change the call I make for a foul based on who committed it. I have given cards to friends before, mostly without worrying about any potential repercussions. The issues come when I am carding acquaintances, and I'm sure many referees will feel the same way - there is a worrying voice in the back of my head that this person will carry this call off the pitch and let that affect how they see me as a person. Many people you see at tournaments you later end up seeing at the social, and at the next tournament, and whilst the vast majority will never judge you as a person for what you call them for as a referee, the concern is always there (for me at least). It's one of the reasons I feel red cards aren't given enough - a referee might be lenient on a call which would otherwise be a yellow card, because a second for that player would have them sent off and they don't want to do that. Fouls should be judged independently to what has occurred earlier, just as the punishments shouldn't be influenced by who is involved.
Good friends are like donuts - sweet! Ajantha Abey
So what can we do about all this?
At World Cup, I found it a lot easier to brush off destructive comments from players than I would have done at BQC, and it wasn't just because I've improved in the past few months. This was most likely because I didn't know the players, and even the European players I'd met a few times were easier to deal with mentally than any UK players. So this suggests to me that being removed socially from the players you are refereeing makes it easier, because the nasty comments can be brushed away as they aren't tied to a social opinion of the person, and constructive advice (often delivered more positively) is a lot easier to identify and take on board. The UK community is growing at an incredible rate, and it's highly likely that if I go to Northern Cup next season there will be a good percentage of teams and players I've never met before. So maybe the problem will resolve itself to some extent as we move away from a community where you can put a name and a play style to every face you see.
As for changing the way referees respond to criticism, that is far less up to the general community. I have definitely been guilty of telling referees to ignore what has been said and give bland compliments in the past, but this season I have been working on instead giving the feedback I would like to hear as a referee. It's very rare still for a friend to comment on your refereeing if they just watched the game of quidditch, but especially at World Cup I tried to pay a lot of attention to the referees so I could work out where either they or I could improve in the future. I also asked for feedback from the head referees I was under, and I think this is maybe the easiest thing to introduce across the board to get referees used to hearing criticism and also knowing it is coming from an experienced and fair source. No two referees are the same, and all of us can learn from the others - next season I will try my hardest to both ask and give constructive points to my referee teams, and if you are on pitch with me please try and hold me to that!
Finally, I'd like to see more respect for referees on the pitch, off the pitch, and online. The community would do well to remember that what they post has direct repercussions, because what they say not only can be read, but is likely to be read by referees. Our refereeing community is not well-established or large enough to take losses due to the negativity of everyone else, and I do not believe quidditch can continue to thrive if we have so few referees that they are all incredibly overworked - something which is on the verge of being an issue if the last big inter-club competitions are anything to go by. Also remember that even those of us who are paid are not well paid, and we do it for the love of the game and little more. Don't make us lose our love.
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