No rest for the wicked
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So it’s Easter and instead of gorging myself on chocolate and hot cross buns, I got my ninth season as a rugby referee underway. I’ve spent the last two seasons refereeing soccer, so I offered to be an assistant referee for the Boys’ High Easter Tournament.
After some initial confusion over when the tournament started (I thought it started on Saturday, turns out it was Friday, oops) I got to the ground and got in a warm up which consisted of me running from my car to the referees’ changing rooms to the ground.
As with these preseason tournaments, there tends to be a little disorganization and as a result the referees were constantly trying to figure out who was meant to be where. I just went with the flow, helping out wherever I could.
In terms of my running touch I noticed I’ve held over few interesting habits from soccer, notably running sideways to keep an eye on play and constantly having my flag in my inside hand. In football this is very important as the referee needs to be able to see the flag at all times, in rugby not so much but as I did it without thinking it’s not something I’ll be trying to change.
The only silly thing that carried over from football was a signal which we don’t have in rugby. A coach indicated to me he wanted to make some subs, I told him yes then immediately held my flag above my head, parallel to the ground in both hands, the football signal for a sub. Fortunately nobody really noticed but perhaps it’s a signal we can use in rugby, particularly when there’s no communication equipment available.
As the day wore on, I ended up picking up more games than the three I was down to do and finished the day with five. The final game was probably the hardest of the lot with a local high school demolishing a touring Australian side, meaning I needed to turn in a number of 50m sprints. While I had good speed earlier in the day, it was well and truly gone by this stage of the day.
I also managed to endear myself to supporter during this game, ruling out a try by flagging some earlier foul play. Certainly didn’t affect the outcome of the game, but I felt, given how the offending team were dominating, it was important to ensure that did not go unpunished. It’s that sort of thing that can cause a game to get out of hand, especially in games where one team is dominating the other.
Saturday was not quite such a hectic start to the day and I made sure I only did the two games I was down for, as my legs were suffering a little from Friday’s effort.
So a total of seven 40 minute games in two days means today is a well earned day off. Tomorrow, will be going for a run and taking it easy, the legs need some work but don’t want to over do it.
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