Tag: interview

Ask The Ref: Mike Riley on BBC 5 live

Mike Riley is the manager of the Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) board, which gives him the responsibility of looking after the referees at the professional level in England.

He recently took part in a BBC 5 live special, discussing, you guessed it, refereeing, with a particular emphasis on the Premier League.

Also featured is Kenny Hibbitt (Match Delegate) and Paul Rejer (Senior Coach of PGMO Assistant Referees).

Some topics:

  • Should Assistant Referees turn professional?
  • The assessing and match delegate system.
  • What is being done about the swarming of referees following contentious decisions?
  • Are referees letting personal / ‘big club’ relationships influence decisions?
  • Should assessor reports be made public?
  • Goal line technology and the Extra Assistants.
  • Should referees explain their decisions to the media after a game?

The Podcast can be found on the 5 live podcast page.

Patrick Roux Interview

There is now an interview with Patrick Roux on the BJA web site.

It is good to see a common sense approach is coming in. Especially emphasising the importance of Uchikomi and correct Randori:

“…Randori, in France, is not a bull-fight, as it is in some other countries. Randori is more often used to develop a wide range of techniques. Between Athens and Beijing, the French women’s team changed the way it was doing randori and was rewarded with much greater success.”

Of particular interest was a reference to a throw at the 2008 Olympic games:

Another area, on which he wants to work, is tactical appreciation, for fighters to make an instantaneous decision under the physical and mental pressure of a competition. In Beijing, we had a perfect example of what he means in the final of the under 63 kgs category, when Lucie Decosse of France attacked the defending champion Ayumi Tanimoto, with ouchi-gari, driving the Japanese girl backwards. However, Tanimoto used the forward movement of Decosse to bring her off-balance and counter her perfectly with uchi-mata. For me, it was probably the technical highlight of the Games and demonstrated exactly what judo should be.

This is a counter which I like myself. And it shows why I am struggling with my Uchimata. Performing it as a primary attack doesn’t work too well for me, as clearly I am not generating sufficient Kuzushi. If Uke has effectively done that for me by way of an appropriate attack, it’s a decisive Ippon.

Getting there…