Tag: shido

Formalising the imbalance, and goodbye rolling Ippons?

I was refereeing at the South Coast Junior Open at the weekend. I remember my very first judo grading was at this very venue (Worthing Leisure Centre). It was also good to see Winston Gordon in attendance coaching!

One interesting point came out of the briefing. At EJU level, referees are being urged to downgrade any ‘rolling’ Ippons down to Wazari. On a personal level, this is one I very much agree with. There have been so many weak Ippons scored and this was evident in the Olympic footage as well. In my eyes, an Ippon throw should always have that “OOOH!” factor, including the old “If that was on concrete, Uke would not be getting up again” aspect.

This is always going to be down to interpretation as that is the nature of the rules on this matter. For a throw:

When a contestant with control throws the other contestant largely on his back with considerable force and speed.

Let’s have strong emphasis on ‘considerable’ from now on! Shame we ever moved away from it.

Now, I was privileged to be part of a strong team at the weekend. We did not have a single contest go to a decision, and only a handful entered Golden Score. How is this achieved?

Firstly, a certain amount of luck in us having competitors who went out there to do judo and SCORE. They do the work, we referee it. It’s important to never lose sight of that.

But what CAN the referee do?

  1. Apply penalties accurately and QUICKLY. For some age groups the contests are only two minutes in duration. If the referee is waiting 90 seconds before deciding a judoka is being passive then they have taken too long. If the penalty is there GIVE IT. Especially since the first shido is now ‘free’… it’s a warning, that’s the point!
  2. Clamp down on false attacks. Again, if it is a false attack (I’ve covered what constitutes a false attack before) then GIVE THE PENALTY. Let the player know it is not acceptable. This is also giving their opponent every chance to do their own judo as well rather than someone just falling to the ground every few moments. I’ve started seeing drop seoi-nage attemtps when Tori sometimes rotates less than 45 degrees.
  3. FORMALISE THE IMBALANCE. This sums up the two previous points. It is clear when there is an imbalance between players. This may manifest itself in one of those players scoring (great!) but the referee must also reflect it in the use of penalties WHERE APPROPRIATE. If you get to the end of the contest, and it went to decision, and you are thinking, “That was rubbish, just a load of drops and nothing much happening” and you only ever gave one penalty…. shouldn’t you have done something to wake it all up?

“Don’t be too harsh, especially with children”. This is missing the point. Penalties are given when deserved. Not giving a penalty just because of age is NOT acceptable, in my opinion. Of course, the referee must make allowance for grade level and experience (common sense). In addition, proper explanation of a penalty may be appropriate too! Giving a penalty does not make the referee an ogre. Using hand signals which make him or her look like they are shooting the child in the process probably does…

I was happy with my performance on the day and have various feedback to work with. In particular, I was happy with my corner judge work, especially when things have gone a bit wrong on the scoreboard and I had kept a mental note of which scores should have gone where! You should never be in the position when asked a question about the current contest and you have to respond “I don’t know” …

West of England Judo Open 2009, and July’s Budokwai grading

This is perhaps a delayed blog post as the event itself was held on 12th June 2009. In fact, the results are available for download.

This was my first referee outing as a newly qualified National ‘C’ grade. Quite exciting. Being newly promoted this probably meant I was duty bound to make some massive cock-up. Thankfully, this did not happen, which means it will most likely carry over to the next event…

Amusingly, I was still ‘bottom of the pile’ as there were no Area referees present at the event. Ho hum!

We were presented with a ‘Thank you’ certificate during the briefing which was a really nice touch.

western_open_certificate

The event itself? The lighting took some getting used to. The whole hall had no natural lighting and the artificial lighting had a yellow tinge. It all looked a bit murky. Despite my initial concerns this turned out to be fine.

I was blessed with a great team (Nat ‘A’, Nat ‘B’, Me!) and we worked very well together throughout the day. There was some good spirit and judo on display. This always makes me happy.

It wasn’t a good start as perhaps the most negative judo manifested itself in the first batch of fights (+100 men). There was a lot of just NOTHING HAPPENING, with both players taking overly defensive sleeve grips preventing any attacking moves.

I was a corner judge on the fight I am thinking of. The referee correctly penalised (twice!) but nothing changed. Now, there are two ways of looking at this:

1. Keep giving Shido as the offence keeps happening, until one or both players are disqualified. You may then have a winner, but is it judo? Exercise for the reader: What happens if both players SIMULTANEOUSLY receive indirect hansoku-make because of this?

OR:

2. Tell the players to sort it out! The ref was VERY harsh (“Sort it out or you might as well get off the mat now”) but in my opinion perfectly correct. They are adults. They (should) know the rules.

‘Should’. It’s a shame that senior players are still coming out and not knowing the shiai basics (walking in front of the judges’ chairs, not walking around edge of the mat, bowing procedure…). THIS IS SHIAI 101. The loss of competitive gradings for the kyu grades has not helped here as they were an excellent introduction, but really, coaches should be on top of this before sending any player to a competition.

More recently I was invited to referee at the Budokwai again. I was VERY impressed with the standard of the 1st Kyus vying for their Dan grades. It can sometimes be a bit scrappy but there was some stand-out technique and spirit. There were excellent players there who walked away with zero points simply due to the high standard of the opposition. It was a great day.