(06-07-2016 11:30 AM)Tiki Owl Wrote: Derek Jeter's Player Tribune has an article penned by longtime NHL referee Kerry Fraser. Really good insight into the thinking of hockey officials (and as he says no one wants to grow up and be a ref) and how they try to manage games. While there is some "ego trips" for some, I think that in general there is less about hockey officials wanting to make the game about them than in other sports...take that Greg Oros and Joe West. Hockey officials, as Fraser points out, actively talk with the players and often it is this action that keeps a game in check and not spiraling out of control. Hang around any pro hockey official and you will get lots of great "ref talks to player stories".
Also as in the article he calls the players "boys". Almost universally players in hockey are called boys, by their coaches, officials, and by their teammates. Other sports the players are men or guys, but in hockey they are boys. Somehow I have always thought that was a neat tie-in into the longtime tradition of post-game handshakes at he end of each playoff series.
A good read.
http://www.theplayerstribune.com/2016-6-...e-stories/
Good rugby refs do the same thing. The more they talk to the players, the better the game goes. My players have a hard time understanding offsides sometimes, so the rule I give them is, "If the ref tells you that you're offsides, you're offsides, step back. If the ref does not tell you that you're offsides, then come forward until he does tell you, then step back."
At international matches, officials are miked and vendors sell headsets that are set to the frequency of the referee's mike, allowing you to follow his comments in the stands. The referee mike is also fed to TV broadcasts. There are some great internet videos of Derek Bevan, Welsh referee who called the 2015 Word Cup final, interacting with players.
Two favorite stories. Austin Healy (great name for an English rugby player, contemporary of Remy Martin for France) was an excellent halfback who was a total jerk and almost universally hated. In a club match in England, he was tackled and came up from the ensuing pile complaining that he had been punched. Referee asked him who hit him and he said he didn't know. The opposing captain said, "Well then, it could have been any one of 15" (meaning anyone on his team, so the referee couldn't identify any individual to penalize). The opposing captain said, "Actually, could have been any one of 29" (meaning any of Healy's 14 teammates could have done it as well). The referee replied, "No, 30."
Andre Watson is the only referee to work two World Cup finals. In 2003 in Sydney, at the pre-game meeting with the captains, he told them, "I was a back and my weakness is that I don't always understand all that forward stuff, so as far as scrum penalties, I'm going to pretty much let things go unless they have a significant impact on the game." He continued, "You can tell your players that I'm not going to call anything in the scrums unless I would be willing to bet my mortgage on it." He then proceeded to call every tacky-tacky scrum penalty imaginable through 80 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of overtime. Spectators on both sides were complaining that he blew the whistle so much that it really interfered with the flow of the game. Toward the end, he blew for one more scrum penalty against England. As he rolled off the pile, England forward Jason Robinson said, "Andre, your house must be a piece of crap."
