tmg – Page 6 – extricate.org

First refereeing gig of the pre-season

I have been performing various duties as Assistant Referee in the last few weeks. Yesterday, I got to be the ‘man in the middle’ instead so that I could make sure I had not forgotten how to use my whistle and so on!

Virginia Water (Surrey Elite League) take on Feltham (Combined Counties Football League) each year. As a pre-season non-competitive game it should (SHOULD!) be a ‘friendly’ but as I always say to the players… just how friendly it is will be down to them. Cards still count.

A notable point here is that ‘roll on / roll off’ substitutes are not allowed in these games. Some referees seem to let this go but Surrey FA are explicit on this one: Don’t do it! It’s just like a competitive game in that regard, with such substitutes only allowed in veterans and youth football.

I had never refereed either of the teams so had no idea what to expect. However, you can get a good feel based on the atmosphere before the game, as players arrive and so on. It was a good feel: Everyone was smiling, happy and welcoming. The sunshine probably helped! The management teams and players from both sides gave the impression that it was a game to be enjoyed and would be in the right spirit.

The game went well. Feltham certainly had the run of it, which is to be expected given that they are in the higher league. That said, they only managed to score in added time. At times the game was scrappy which resulted in a lot of fouls being given. I like to let the game flow where possible but when a lot of the fouls were blatant trips it is hard to do that. There would certainly have been scope for cautions for Persistent Infringement but the atmosphere stayed friendly with players helping each other to their feet and apologising. I will make the most of this before the season starts for real!

prematch_inspection_talk — Breaking the ice: Pre-match inspection and chat!

Hand-shakes all round at the end. What are my own comments on my performance?

APPLICATION OF LAW: I’m happy I caught pretty much everything. This included disallowing a goal due to a very blatant push on a defender. An easy sell though as it was so obvious! I was aware that I need to get back into the habit of remembering player numbers though in order to keep full awareness of Persistent Infringement.
MATCH CONTROL: The game was played in good spirits and I only needed to ‘have words’ a couple of times. In a competitive game I would have certainly cautioned one player for dissent but it was not needed this time around due to the overall good spirit. The important thing for me here is that I was all set to give it and did not ‘bottle it’.
POSITIONING AND FITNESS: Happy with this. I was in a good position to sell all of my decisions and kept moving. Reacted to where the ball was dropping on set pieces. I did start to flag a little during the second half so there is still room for improvement.
ALERTNESS AND STOPPAGES: There were no surprises. Quickly reacted to an extra ball appearing on the pitch. There was some confusion with a substituted player trying to come back on again but this was resolved before play was restarted.
COMMUNICATION: I was really happy with this. I felt like I had a very good rapport with the players throughout the game. Explained my decisions as required but to be honest, most of them were pretty obvious (blatant shirt pulls, pushes, trips…). I’m also happy that I indicate WHERE a foul was well (this is important when bringing back advantage, so that the player who CURRENTLY has the ball doesn’t feel like they are being accused of something!)
TEAMWORK: Club officials. They did a good job. I overruled upon occasion (such as an offside flag going up too early) and all handled in good grace.
ADVANTAGE: Average. I did play some good ones, although sadly no goals resulted. However, I missed one obvious opportunity when I should have just given it a few more seconds. Hindsight!

Overall, a really enjoyable game and I am looking forward to the next one! It will be for a lower league so it will be interesting to experience the differences…

Migrating to a new Xbox 360

I have had an Xbox 360 for a very long time now. I started out with the 20 GB model which suffered the almost obligatory Red Ring Of Death and I took full advantage of the extended warranty which had been issued due to that exact problem!

Over time, the 20 GB storage has proved to not be enough. Various improvements to the 360 offering have made this happen:

LIVE ARCADE SIZE RESTRICTIONS: The size limit for downloaded games was 50 MB per game on launch. It now sits at 350 MB! Plus the number of titles being released, including ‘homebrew’ has escalated.
MORE MULTIMEDIA: Video rental is now in full force on the 360. They take up a lot of space, particularly if in HD format.
INSTALL TO HARD DRIVE: The ability to install games from DVD to the hard drive did not exist when the console was originally launched. It is now there! A game could take up to 3-4 GB of space and this is a significant chunk of the original 360’s 20 GB hard drive!

It is perhaps also worth remembering that one of the SKU bundles for the 360 did not even have a hard drive!

Good fortune has led me to be in the possession of a shiny new black Xbox 360! Now, deep down, it is doing exactly the same thing as my original console but there are some very noticable differences:

LOTS OF SPACE: The obvious one really, isn’t it?
QUIET: This one was not hard to notice given that the original 360 sounded like a jet turbine. Now it is possible to hear the DVD drive whirring around from across the room.
THE EJECT BUTTON IS CUTE: Wait, what?! This caught me by surprise. When you touch the eject button on the console it makes a little chiming noise. It’s great!

I purchased the Hard Drive Transfer Kit from Amazon UK. This works as simply as you can imagine. Connect one end to the new console and the other to your old hard drive. The dashboard then does the rest (although it took about 15 seconds to realise the cable was there) and migrates the items of your choosing.

One caveat here. I made the mistake of ‘recovering’ my gamer profile on the new 360 before performing the transfer. This proved to be a waste of time because my profile was then overwritten by the one on the old hard drive. Plus, because I had performed the recovery process, it was then marked as out of date so I had to do it again! I didn’t lose any data but it did waste time as everything needed to be downloaded from Microsoft’s servers again.

I’m loving the new console so far. It now matches my other kit (funny how things change: most of my AV stuff used to be white), doesn’t damage hearing and no more worries (yet) about hard drive space!

Are you showing empathy for the game?

In my previous post about my pre-season starting I wrote about adjusting assumptions. I am going to elaborate a little about that today.

A key skill for a referee, or in fact anyone in pretty much any situation, is to show appropriate empathy. The Laws of the Game are immutable but a key skill is to apply them in a which which does not alienate the referee from the players, officials and supporters. Two referees could make the same technical decisions during a match, with one ending up loved and the other hated by the end.

This has been made very clear to me during my pre-season so far. I have been acting as Assistant Referee on various pre-season ‘friendlies’. As is traditional when acting as an Assistant, you can work on a game that you not allowed to actually referee. It is a great learning experience to watch higher-level referees in action.

The game at the semi-professional levels is a different beast to the ‘park’ football that I mostly referee. Applying the same refereeing touch would be a bit of a disaster. Why?

It comes down to the different expectations of the players. The higher level players are more athletic and play in a more physical manner. There is a lot more ‘man-handling’ going one and the players just get on with it! Now, there may still be the desperate appeal for a little shove but it tends to be a quick shout and then instantly forgotten about. In short, they are trying it on.

In my first such pre-season game, there was a tussle in front of me, and I flagged for the foul. In ‘park’ football, it would have been the right decision and the players would have been screaming for it anyway. At this higher level? Neither player had any idea what I had stuck my flag up for! The referee correctly waved play on and I played my ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card to the players (“I was too close to have a proper view of it”).

As my pre-season continues, I will need to be very aware of showing appropriate empathy for the skill and fitness levels of the players. This is also a requirement when being assessed, under ‘Match control’. It will have to vary from game to game, and especially from league to league!

How have you demonstrated good (or bad!) empathy in a situation?

Have you started off on the wrong foot and then managed to ‘win’ a situation around?

I would love to have your comments!

First time at the Chelsea Academy

I was really happy to be given an appointment to act as Assistant Referee at the Chelsea FC Academy this weekend. I have helped out in Academy games before at Aldershot Town and Fulham and had heard good things about the Chelsea set-up.

The facilities at their training base in Cobham are certainly impressive. The pitch was exquisite and a privilege to be working on!

The game itself (versus Colchester United) was fun as the talent level of the players was naturally very high. Lots of quality passing play before fast attacking sprints. My legs got a great work-out! The only downside was that it was pouring down with rain for the entire 90 minutes so I was doing a great impression of a drowned rat at the end of it.

Particularly impressive was the discipline and sportsmanship of the players. Both academies involved are clearly coaching their players in the right way. In some ways, the game was nearly refereeing itself which is a great sign of strong discipline.

I have another appointment there soon which I am looking forward to!

‘Unicorn’ – My Tall Tale

This was my entry into the Marlow Regional Tall Tales contest in 2011. It was my first attempt at ever delivering a ‘Tall Tale’. A definite learning experience and I feel that next time I will go for more of a humorous angle as these were the speeches which tended to be the winning ones!

Audio only on this one. As a result, no use of body language to show off but some vocal variety to be listened to! I was going for an emotional story with a moral. What do you think?

I was representing Farnham Speakers and this all falls under the Toastmasters remit.

Speeches, Vocal Variety and Emotion

At the last Farnham Speakers meeting, I was privileged to be able to evaluate a wonderful and emotional speech. The topic was the speaker’s experience at assisting at a home birth and the thrills and concerns that came with it.

I was asked by the speaker to pay particularly attention to Vocal Variety as she had been ‘pulled up’ on this a few times before. It was not the goal of the speech but it is good to be considering the whole package.

The speech was an excellently presented story of the occasion. It made me realise just how much vocal variety is key to the delivery of emotion. This was a very personal story, after all, and there was no doubt as to any of the sincerity. It was very clear just how much the occasion meant to her.

Vocal Variety allows the ‘highs and lows’ of an occasion to contrast with each other, which in turn will make the impact of any emotion so much stronger. As mentioned, the sincerity was very clear. However, what would have made the speech even stronger would have been more vibrant vocal variety with the descriptions of the more ‘manic’ parts of the birth: Suddenly everything starts to happen and there is scope for panic despite any preceding calmness. Reflecting this in the voice is very powerful.

The strong emotional feeling of a baby being delivered safely would contrast so very well against dramatic use of vocal variety in the preceding moments… the ‘Is everything going to be okay?’ effect.

Such contrasting is a classic story-telling technique. Think of all those ‘rags to riches’ stories! “Look at me, I’m confident and strong up here on the stage…. but…. it never used to be this way…”.

How have you used Vocal Variety or other techniques recently to really increase the level of emotional involvement that you have with an audience?

Pre-season starts here!

It really does not feel like that long ago I was piling in the games at the end of the 2010/2011 season. The snow and other bad weather meant there was a backlog so quite a few midweek evening games were available. This was great for me as it means I have already hit my required quota of 20 games since March in order to hit one of the promotion criteria.

Now, here we are in pre-season mode! I’ve been keeping up my running and have been involved in a couple of games but now the ‘real stuff’ begins. I have a pre-season schedule coming together with a mixture of referee and assistant positions at various levels. Referees need a pre-season just like players do! It is a chance for us to get the fitness in line (both physical and mental stamina), perhaps try a few new things and ensure we are confident when the season truly begins.

I had my first game this week as Assistant Referee. This was a valuable learning experience as the other two officials are both active supply league referees. In addition, the game was frenetic due to lots of triallists wanting to prove their worth!

The teams themselves are at a higher level than I am currently permitted to referee. Some notes on that:

FITNESS AND SKILL: A lot higher than ‘parks’ football! I was able to keep up just fine and it was a great test of my sprinting ability. The ball would be kept in play for a lot longer as well which made it a more interesting game overall.
MORE PHYSICAL PLAY: The challenges and general play were a LOT more physical. However, there were no complaints as most of the time it was controlled and the players were just getting on with it. This took adjusting to. At ‘my’ level, I would be giving fouls for that sort of contact and the players would be expecting that to happen as well.
ADJUST ASSUMPTIONS: A couple of times I flagged for offside way too early. I was in ‘parks’ mode where I would assume (correctly) that the offside applied because no other player could be involved. I needed to wait to absolutely sure in this game because another player could EASILY zip through, or the advantage could shift IMMEDIATELY and should be considered. A great learning experience.

A summary of the game is that my fitness was easily up to the task but that it took me longer to get my mental sharpness in line, especially with not flagging for offsides too soon. As the players are faster at this level your assumptions have to be a bit different. Things flowed a lot better during the second half. My concentration had also been a hit a little bit due to a ‘flag malfunction’ in the first half….

Lots more games to come. It is going to be a busy and productive season and I am really looking forward to it!

p.s. I’ve also been nominated by Surrey FA for consideration to FA Competitions for this season which is really exciting!

Delivering an effective speech evaluation

I really enjoy getting the opportunity to evaluate speeches as part of my membership of Farnham Speakers and the world of Toastmasters in general. Speech giving is a real art and I have learned over time that evaluating in an effective manner is one as well.

I am going to share some of the ways that I like to give an evaluation. I am in debt to many of the great speech evaluators out there as I have certainly picked up some wonderful techniques from them.

WHAT ARE YOU EVALUATING? Every speech has a goal so remember that the evaluation has to be mindful of this. This includes taking the time to talk to the speaker beforehand in case there is anything special they want commented on (“I keep fidgeting with my hands, can you check I don’t do it this time?”). Think of your evaluation as having a target.
THE EVALUATION IS FOR EVERYONE. A common mistake is for the evaluator to just talk at the speech giver. This has the instant result of making everyone else in the room not feel welcome. Target your evaluation at the entire audience. You should still be sure to reference the giver of the speech though… you are not a robot.
COMMENDATION / RECOMMENDATION / COMMENDATION. This is the cornerstone of an effective evaluation model. Start with the positives, then mention what could be improved, and round off with something positive. I won’t dwell too much on this one as it is a bit obvious!
YOU ARE WORTHY. I sometimes see evaluators feel they are not ‘worthy’ of giving an evaluation! “I haven’t given many speeches”. It doesn’t matter: Your opinion has value!
THE SPEECH WAS NOT PERFECT. Perhaps linked to the previous point. Sometimes evaluators will say a speech was pretty much perfect and that they have no recommendations. Seriously? There was nothing at all that could have been improved in the speech? Try harder and don’t be shy. As an evaluator you have a duty to evaluate fully.
MAKE A ‘CALLBACK’ TO THE SPEECH. It helps show warmth if you somehow reference the content of the speech in your introduction. Combine this with humour and it will really help bond with the audience. It will show that you genuinely liked a speech if you did this, instead of a generic “I liked this speech”.
WE KNOW IT IS YOUR OPINION. Avoid In my opinion…. There is no need for it as by definition your evaluation is your opinion. It can sound defensive and apologetic.
CONCLUSION. Don’t forget this. In addition, please telegraph it as you will get the full attention of the audience for the ‘big finish’.

I hope that you have found these tips useful. If you have any of your own to share then please go ahead and post a comment. I would love to read them!

A belated County Cup Final

I was really happy towards the end of last season to be appointed to officiate at the Surrey FA Sunday Premier Cup Final. These appointments are made on merit based on a referee’s performance throughout the season. Various things are considered, including marks from teams on the referee’s leagues and administration. It was a great game and occasion.

I was therefore a little surprised to be given a second Final…. in July! This is normally the ‘closed season’ where everyone is relaxing and eating too many biscuits. Or is that just me? The Final had even already been played. However, it had been later revealed that the winner had fielded an ineligible player and as a result were removed from the competition. A losing semi-finalist was pulled into the final to replace them. All seemingly very political but the rules on the eligibility of players are very clear.

Thankfully, I’ve been keeping up my fitness and as it was to be an Under 11s game it was never going to be too stressful. It was a good gauge of where I am though, both in terms of physical and mental stamina, both of which are vital to a referee. I am happy to report the game went very well with good conduct from all involved.

This is essentially the beginning of my run-up to the next season. I have a schedule of adult games from this point forward, with a combination of ‘running the line’ or being in charge. It will allow me to build up my fitness and concentration, so that when September comes, I will be completely in the zone. This is very important as my remaining two assessments both need to be done that month. There will be no room for excuses!

Are you doing anything to work on your own physical and mental sharpness at the moment?

Google+: Moving in Circles

I have been playing with Google+ for a fair few days now. The number of people I recognise finally getting to sign up is increasing at a great rate. As a result, I am putting more and more people into Circles.

To begin with, I just saw Circles as, well, ‘different’ but I am starting to think that they are pretty neat. Let’s start off with Google’s own video about them:

The summary is simple: You can place people in as many different Circles as you like. When you share content, you decide which Circles get to see it. No-one ever knows which Circle you have put them in. If someone has put you in a Circle you are under no obligation to do the same to them.

Most people find their comfort zone in Facebook, so how does it all stack up?

IT’S EASY. People can be added to Circles with just a few clicks or by a drag ‘n’ drop interface. It feels very intuitive.
PRIVACY IS EASY. Have you tried using Facebook’s privacy controls recently? They are a bit of a nightmare to navigate. I love the Circle Sharing system that Google+ has as anything at all that you decide to share can be sent out to whichever Circles you want. Or you can go fully public. The choice is yours and it is easy to see at a glance what you have been doing.
STOP BORING PEOPLE. There is no need to just share everything with everyone. Family pictures? Share them with your ‘Family’ Circle. Some really geeky social media stuff? Perhaps share them with ‘Social Media Geek Squad’. Your secret love of kittens? ‘Kitten lovers anonymous’. All the Circles are fully customisable.
IT’S YOUR SECRET. No-one will ever know which Circles you have placed them in. Be careful though, as people do talk to each other, so someone who is NOT in your ‘Kitten lovers anonymous’ Circle may work out your terrible secret eventually…
BE CAREFUL. There has to be a strong warning here which is a standard Internet one. Once you have shared ANYTHING on the Internet, even with a select few people, the assumption has to be made that one day absolutely EVERYONE could read it. It all depends on whether those select few people decide to share it! Think ‘Internet gossip’. Tools can block the ability to click ‘Share’, but ultimately you are at the mercy of cut and paste.

I hope that you have found this useful and would love to hear about how you are getting on with Circles or any other aspects of Google+.

p.s. There is a Facebook group called ‘Kitty Lovers Anonymous’ – who knew? 🙂