It is important as a referee to be able to see where your 'game' needs work. You can get feedback anonymously, via the IQA/IRDP, however that can be hard to relate back to a specific game if it takes a long time to come back after a tournament. My personal preference is getting feedback from captains and players, especially those who are referee qualified themselves. There are a good number of referees in the UK spread across lots of different teams, so it's fairly easy to get a quick summary of how things went after a game. I trust the people I ask to be honest and fair in their assessments! After two years, I'm also fairly competent at assessing how a game went from my perspective. These weaknesses are my current areas to work on from this season.
1. Speed.
I'm relatively unfit, I have short legs, and the power I have in my legs is not the sort used for sprinting. Or long-distance really. This means that I can struggle to keep up with the best drivers in the quaffle game, even if they are hampered by a broom and I'm not. Yes, I make up a lot of it using good positioning (cutting corners) but I could still do with having an extra gear to step up my game when I'm head refereeing. Of course, increasing my speed will also help my playing - most things done to help refereeing help playing and vice versa - but I cannot sub myself out for a faster referee if play is getting quicker. As an assistant referee speed is less of an issue because of how much I move anyway, and beater play often isn't straight up and down the pitch, but it will still help. The main things that I miss due to lack of speed are the beginnings of pile-ups behind the hoops, and contact coming to stop a fast break if I am still trying to catch up.
2. Boundary rules.
As I said in my post comparing UK refereeing to the other standards at World Cup (here), UK referees in general are bad at the boundary rules. I am among this group. I know most of them pretty well in theory, especially after spending a couple of weeks studying them intensely to write the referee tests for QuidditchUK, but putting them into practice in a game situation is another thing entirely. My brain blanks, or at least slows, and by the time I've thought about what the call is that I'm supposed to be making, play is back on pitch and I've missed my chance. This happens with both bludger play as an assistant referee, and as a head referee watching the quaffle. Some of the rules have changed slightly in Rulebook 10, so we'll see if I can remember this set better than the last one. Many turnovers have been missed in the past season because of my slow reactions to balls (or people) crossing the boundary, and while I am no means the worst for this, it is one of the consistently weak parts of my rules application.
3. Chatting to players.
This is the bit where I get to say, very modestly, that I'm just too nice. Mainly though, I'm just a little too lenient in some situations about players talking back to me. I don't like reprimanding people for a comment here and there, but I should at least ignore it which isn't something I've been doing in the past season. It's especially the case in tournaments which aren't 'serious' (regionals, nationals et al), and whilst these are more lax in general, I should still keep my standard of refereeing high in all areas. Chatting to players delays the game, and it means I'm not entirely focused on play in the moments where I am talking or listening. Being a referee means being professional at all times, and while I am generally good at it, my talkative nature detracts from this appearance.
4. Pre-game procedure.
Captains meetings and referee meetings both involve a lot of things to go through, and I routinely remember only about 50% of the things I'm supposed to say. While I don't think anyone else minds too much, it does annoy me when I remember on the starting line that I forgot to tell the captains about specific things I'd be watching for, or ask my assistant referees to watch certain balls on brooms up. As a head referee, my games would go a lot better and smoother if I could get everything out in a timely manner, before the game started, and I'd spend less time kicking myself for forgetting something really important. And no, before you ask, I don't then improve my meetings over the course of a tournament. I just forget different bits. Yes, I really do need to have a memory that is less like a sieve, that would be really great.
5. Words in sensible orders.
I don't know if you've ever heard me referee, but I often get my words all in a jumble. This is embarrassing when I'm trying to clearly tell the crowd and scorekeepers table what a foul is for, and just annoying if I'm trying to tell someone to go back to hoops and I don't know their name. My mouth just doesn't do what my brain tells it to, and that just slows my whole game down. I get tongue-tied in normal life, too, but usually I'm not talking to a hundred or so people in the crowd of a final or semi-final. If you were at the London referee academy recently, you may have noticed this particular trait! It has nothing to do with nerves, but it is an area I think I can and should improve on as I go into my third full year of refereeing, as one of the top referees in the country.
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