The Referee

On a post a few weeks back I was asked the following  question by Winecape

“Question here from South Africa: The assessors form used to assess the referees in your country. What form/headings and or point structure do they use? I’m curios as to how you get rated officially in comparison to our assessment forms here in the Premier Soccer League (PSL). What are the salient points in the form, and do they count to a specific points total etc.?

Any info will be helpful. I know that South Africa (earlier in my career) based their referee assessments partly on the UK Premiership model, but don’t know if this still the case.”

At supply league level the Referee’s assessment is split in to 7 Area’s. Application of Law, positioning and Work Rate, Alertness, Communication, Team Work, Advantage and Match Control.  The assessor will talk about each section highlighting any strengths and development points (no weakness anymore).  Also there will be some narrative about incidents etc.

At the end of the assessment there should be (but not always) 3 strengths and then depends on the assessor 3 development points.  However just because you’ve only got 2 development points don’t think your going to get a great mark!  I had this last season when despite having only 2 development points I got a 68.  When I questioned it I was told to accept it and that assessor is a known tough marker.

Then at the end there is a mark awarded with 70 the expected standard.  If it is greater than 85 or less than 65 it has to go through the assessor co-ordinator first.  The mark is calculated by a weighting for  each area.  Each area is marked out of 5 then multiplied by its weighting. Application of Law & Match Control are X5  (so 50% of the marks) The rest are x2.

Contrib assistant assessments are a similar method however there are just 5 categories.  These are Alertness, Support, Signals, Offside (Active & passive) and Fitness & Positioning.   These are marked out of 10 with each one have a weighting of x2.   It’s genearly hard to get anything above an 80 as an assistant.  It’s not impossible but you are limited to what happens in the game.  A case in point Saturday I received all 8′s bar a 7 for offside.  I didn’t have one gall game and wasnt even close to giving one.  So couldnt argue.  The other assistant had 1 which ruled out a chance on goal.  He got a 80.  I’ve no issue with that and thats the way it goes.  Likewise a few years ago I received a 92 and the factor in this was I had called the Referee over for an off the ball incident.

Hopefully that helps answer your question. I would be interested to know how other country’s work to assess Referee’s.  I know there are people in Canada, Ireland and New Zealand that read this so feel free to add to the comments or email me and ill put a post up on it.