Selection of Referees by BFA
Is there a public spreadsheet showing which referees have been selected by the BFA Refereeing Committee for Junior World Cups and proposed to the EFC for championships?
Also who are the selectors?
I could not find this info on the BFA site. I believe Murray Morisson is the Director responsible for this and Ian Hunter the Chair.
I gather in some weapons the plan is now to use local foreign refs rather than GBR FIE Refs. There has always been this dilema. How to improve the standard of GBR FIE refs and at the same time have them available and the counter view that it is cheaper to leave the GBR refs at home and hire a local foreign referee.(which aslo avoids the FIE fine. I know the FIE wanted to tighten up on the hirimng of local referees and try to prevent it as you may ened up with no neutral referees.)
Ultimately, that decision is one for the BFA Board and top be fair is really not an easy one, as there are different targets for the development of referees and simply fulfiling the FIE requirement to have a referee present to referee for your country and naturaly fencers who havsw to fund themselves want the cheapest option.
I imagine that the IYC is now managing this.
It seems if this is true we are going backwards once again.
DS
On my signal unleash Hell !!
You were tried tested and found wanting
I used a German ref this weekend. It was that or pay a 1000 euro fine. We saved each fencer over 100 euros doing this. It was actually cheaper by quite a way than taking a GB ref with us. As far as I am concerned it was a no brainer on this occasion. If we don't have enough home grown refs and it is ultimately cheaper to "buy" a ref than take one of our own then maybe that is the option and the way forward unpalatable as it may be.
England have a different system to BF, which we use for our European trips.
We recognise that whilst it is almost always cheaper to hire a local, that means that our refs don't get the chance to develop.
On the other hand, we don't want our fencers and parents to have to fork out for the development of those referees with an inflated trip price.
Therefore the trip budget is calculated based on the cost of the cheapest option (usually paying the fine or hiring a local ref) and the fencers are charged on this basis. England then picks up the bill for the difference if we do take one of our refs.
It works pretty well, and seems fairer to all concerned.
Ray
As normal Ray you speak a lot of sense. As a parent of 2 fencers that have been on the cadet trips and will hopefully be on the junior trips I shudder to think how much we will have spent on developing British reffs by the time they are adults. Parents should always pay the cheapest option. If BF want to develop refs for the whole fencing community then BF should pay for it.Originally Posted by Baldric
Are there rules about the provision and standard of referees at Satellites?
On Sunday at the Leon Paul Cup there was apparently some self-refereeing of poules due to insufficient referees present. Also, I know of one poule allocated a British ref where this person (FIE and presumably paid to be there) refused to referee the Brits in their poule so these fencers therefore ended up being refereed by some of the foreign fencers they were competing against. I'm very confused. Is this normal for this level of competition? Does this happen at internationals abroad as well?
That sounds odd, however, I saw a certain ref presiding a fight when 1 of the fencers was from their club (I suppose the loophole was they aren't from the same country)
Leon Paul Cup
Correct the club is not provided in the FIE XML download used to run the competition so separation is by country.
The following may not be exactly correct as my involvement was limited to the event days themselves, however hopefully the following helps.
The reduced refereeing was predominantly due to several nations not providing the referees they should have. The event also had a couple of extra GB referees who were due to referee but could not make it I believe.
At least two chose to take a fine and the third dropped a fencer so the event was short several referees. This being despite the organisers contacting the nations the week before to notify them of the need to provide a referee.
In theory the fine allows the organiser to get in additional referees. For the Eden Cup nations have to specify the referee in advance so on Saturday referee numbers were not an issue as additional referees could be brought in as it was known in advance if any fines would be paid.
However for the Satellite (of which the Leon Paul is pretty big) this is not the case. Basically the FIE system could do with a tweak to bring it in line and make the referees pre specified when the fencers enter.
As it was we had 12 referees for (ideally 16 pistes) with an entry of 160+ and lots of GB fencers (hence country clashes in the early rounds and a bit of self refereeing). The referees we had worked really hard (big thank you) and from the 128 down I believe it was all refereed with country clashes taken into account by the PC.
As to whether this is normal at this level I am not sure as my experience is limited to this event.
It sounds very abnormal, but very difficult if the competition is so short if referees.
Glad it all went well and there was such a good entry.
I have found out more today about the refereeing situation. Mark Nelson-Griffiths and Pat Casey are the selectors. There is no Chair or committee at present, but Gildas Braine is acting as a coordinator.
There is also a debate going on about how to provide referees for Junior World Cups amongst the weapons etc.
The system that Ray described is what we used to partially do at BFA, with a grant to each wepaon to help provide referees. It worked well and helped reduce the cost to fencers. I presume the finances have now been allocated to another BFA area.
When I spoke to her at the Welsh open Pat Casey told me that she had resigned from being a selector.As the Ref Com Chair appointed by the Board has resigned, I'd have thought that the board ought to be advertising the post and inviting applicants for the position. According to the Borad approved terms of Reference it would then be for the new chair and the CEO toappoint other committee members, and it would then be for the Committee to organise selection.Unless the board have decided to dispense with the Ref Com and centralise things, in which case it would be nice of the board to tellFIE referees that this is what they are doing.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies. I have had them all shot." - Ramon Maria Narvaez
"Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" - HP Lovecraft
Duncan,
The board is carrying out a review of our committee structure, and so did not feel it was appropriate to go through the whole appointment process at this point in time. As an interim measure we have decided to appoint selectors and a coordinator on a temporary basis. The names will be finalised and announced in the near future.
Graham
I understand Pat Casey and Mark Nelson-Griffiths are doing the selections.
It is a pity if we have no active refereeing committee to promote and develop refereeing when there is such a demand for more referees.
Hopefully the Board will sort this as soon as possible.
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