Jafalete

It must be about 17 years since I became involved with canoe polo. I remember my first night at the pool in a little town out of Palmerston North- Fielding. The guru of NZ Canoe Polo, Troy Lipsham, was going over the principles of the rules and about what we could or couldn’t do. My mate, Cheryl, was less than impressed.

“Can’t we just get on and do this already?” she muttered. Meanwhile, Troy was delivering four ideas that would forever influence my understanding of those rules.

Fairness. Spectacle. Definition. Safety. When you think about it, the rules are designed to promote those four ideals, and ever since then, I’ve evaluated rule changes and the way I referee using those principles. Why am I bothering to recount my early experiences? As I began my canoe polo career with a chat about the rules, I had a whistle in my mouth from the very beginning. I’ve been refereeing now, for longer than I played. I watched the game for months before I ever tried it, and now that I’ve retired, I’m refereeing still.

That commitment eventually resulted in an invitation to referee at the World Championships in Milan this year. Convinced that my C Grade rating would result in a line judge position, I was pleasantly surprised to get a number of games to referee, some of which were fairly heated. In one exchange my colleague and I delivered no less than 11 cards between the two teams. That’s a card every two minutes or less, and the game is only 20 minutes long. In another game,  gave my first ever red card to a coach who screamed obscenities at me rather than directions at his team. He kept screaming, while I wondered exactly how long it would take before I had to call security or end the game out of a sheer inability to do my job. (He walked when I turned away to talk to the score bench. Lesson learned- deliver the card, then walk away!)

Refereeing at the World Championships was a huge privilege and a massive learning curve. What I stand by, in spite of language difficulties and translations and different ideas about the game between countries and continents, is that every referee should be committed to refereeing the rules as they are written, regardless of the level of the players. In fact, it is my belief that beginners need a strict introduction to the rules just as I was given. In particular, elite level players should be introduced to changes in the rules as soon as possible, and no dissent or misbehaviour on the pitch should be tolerated.

When I first refereed at the Worlds, I realised that it was easier than in NZ because I didn’t have people waving rule books in my face and going over each rule with a fine tooth comb. By the end of my refereeing there, the lack of knowledge about the rules was the most frustrating and exhausting element. I’d been abused by older more experienced referees who hadn’t known what rule I was calling or by fans who had never seen refereeing according to the actual rules. In Lerici, where I refereed before the Worlds, I was accused of refereeing against the German team in spite of their deliberate attacks on players taking free shots or throws, and in spite of being able to show every call made in the rule book. Members of the Lerici club and the audience wouldn’t look at me or talk to me at all. I wasn’t invited to referee later in the tournament, even though the other referees were patently and blatantly unaware of the actual rules. It became obvious that referees in Europe had been coasting, with only a handful having the guts to take on the abuse and shock of the majority and referee the game in the way it is intended to evolve.

What also became obvious is that many players and fans are ignorant of female referees. None was more ignorant, however, than me. When I list off abuse from people in Lerici, I failed to mention that some of those calls were made by my male compatriot- but people who challenged the calls asked me why I made them. A perceived mistake was my mistake alone. This wasn’t a conscious effort on their part- it is what people actually believed. I was wrong, my calls were wrong, I was ‘learning’ the rules. This attitude was even more blatantly obvious at the Worlds. While I’m willing to learn, and willing to improve, it took a while for me to realise that the adaptation was painful for some of the male referees. They’d never had to face that level of inspection, by the looks of it. I’d assumed my attitude was simply the result of being a referee, but as I look at it, I realise I’d only ever seen it from my own perspective.

My perspective: I’m a referee.

The world’s perspective: I’m a female referee.

I’m not bitter or twisted about any of this. These observations, in general, make me a better referee, but then that again is my perspective. I attempt to use objective methods for assessing my performance and I reflect constantly on my calls and interpretations. What potentially could bother me is those attitudes towards women in refereeing influencing the progression of females in refereeing. Where the attitudes remain unchallenged, a lack of objectivity remains, and there is no way of removing that lack of objectivity unless a person in power can provide incentive to do so.

When I was told a percentage of referees had to be female, I was surprised. To my mind, a referee is just a referee. I do believe now, however, that women can make better referees- not because men are not good referees, but because expectations are higher. What I want, however, is for those attitudes and expectations to also temper my male colleagues. Let’s face it, when we stand on the side, we are only on the sidelines. Male or female, we are still just a referee. At the end of the day, the athletes have to win the game, and we have to mediate. What I hope the world will realise is that we don’t need to be of a specific gender in order to officiate.