Reffing
Once you get confidence as a referee, it’s great fun. You have power over the entire game, and it’s great for recognising rules as a player. More to the point, it needs to be done, and you’ve put yourself forward as a coach, so get going! The rules of Korfball can be found on the EUKC website, or the IKF website if ours aren’t up to date.
It’s really important to give people experience of reffing in training, and is an area that definitely needs more focus. Have an inexperienced ref with someone watching over and giving feedback. Or have the inexperienced ref acting as a linesman, using a bib as a flag. The pressure is off, but they can still watch for things and call them up.
General reffing tips:
• First rule of reffing: Learn to blow your whistle, and learn to do it powerfully. It sets your tone as a ref on court.
• Second rule of reffing: Be confident, and if you see something, call it! Don’t let play just run on too much, but then again, don’t blow up for every little thing. Just use some common sense.
• Third rule of reffing: Sort your position out. It’s a matter of science that the closer you are to an authority figure, the less likely you are to question them (Google “Milgram Experiment”), and the players will more likely trust your decision.
• You can use different whistle blows to control the game more effectively. Short sharp ones for restarts, longer blows for penalties/goals, quick sharp trills to bring play back, and an extra long set of blasts for half-time and full-time.
• Move away from the comfort of the ‘half-way-line-rectangle’ and keep moving around. Stay close to play without getting in the way, and, if possible, keep yourself in a triangle with the ball and the post. It’s hard to see defended calls if you’re behind the ball.
• Keep checking out players at the post for contact etc., and don’t worry too much about watching a shot to see if it’s gone in – people will celebrate if it has…
• Try to keep track of who’s shooting which way, and whether one goal or two has been scored at least, if you’re not keeping score yourself. I right arrows on my score sheets to help me out.
• Enjoy it! And if you feel you need to liven it up in any way, invent some crazy flamboyant ref signals…