World Cup Reports

[Baca Loco]

Lunch break

Steve-O
I'm missing one TNG's games to respond now but felt compelled to do so.
I don't know who has posted elsewhere or what they've said but consider this--
How many missed, ignored, too far away or out of position to call, etc. calls does it take to alter the outcome of a single game? One can do it if it's truly egregious. And with 4 or 5 refs on large. complicated fields what's the likelihood of that occurring with some regularity?
Add to that lazy (hot) (tired) (ignorant) (etc.) refs spread around the 12 fields and you can't possibly be surprised when calls get botched or more commonly not made at all! I actually heard a ref reply to an outraged player yesterday that he didn't step in where he could make a call cuz he didn't want to get shot!

However, I can also say I know players from at least two dozen teams here as well as some of the refs and virtually everyone I've talked to whether they're winning or losing (and plenty have made their respective semis) have stories about widespread ref incompetence or inactivity or sheer inability to deal with the circumstances on the fields.

The pat answer has always been "losers whine" but the reality is there is frequently very small margins to winning or losing games these days and players will push the envelope and if there aren't enough competent diligent refs on the playing fields the results can easily turn into a crap shoot that only encourages more "cheatin'" play.

That's it, kids. The computer I'm using is going home today and I'll be busy with 10-man so no further reports till Sunday night late.

PS--Bud, ya gotta sweep up for me.

 

[Buddha 3]

Consider things swept.

Oh, what does eg..egre...egrer...grerg....thingy mean?

 

[Wadidiz]

Originally posted by Buddha 3
Consider things swept.

Oh, what does eg..egre...egrer...grerg....thingy mean?

I feel better knowing my new-found P8ntballer friends are on location!

Leave it to your resident English language consultant:

egregious (i gre' jes) adj., remarkable or extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant; notorious.

Example of usage: The egregious situation described compells me to add a new rule suggestion to the list started in the "Enforcing the rules.." thread. (I know I'm sounding like a broken record.) Check it!

Steve Morris for president of international paintball rules!

Steve

 

[shamu]

Wups, didn't mean to be taking cheap shots at the refs (if that's how it sounded). I was just tossing out some possible reasons for sub-par performance, such as:

- long, hot days in the sun (fine if you're with a babe in a bikini, not so fine if you're in long pants, long sleeves and goggles)

- understaffing (not enough refs for the field, to go around, etc)

- differences in style/rules interpretation/training between PRO refs, euro teams and american team reffing.

I'm heading down to Orlando tomorrow so I'm sure I'll get a first hand look at the reffing this week.

.... and if any of you refs are reading this - you're doing a great job. Really. It was the guy over in the taco who was dissing you

 

[Baca Loco]

Right, I'm back

And stand on everything I said about the reffing earlier though it's really a moot point and this point, isn't it?
It got so bad though that there were literally only three and four refs on a field for 10-man prelim games. When I asked the ultimates what was up they said various members of the Am teams who were supposed to be reffing weren't always showing.
Both the NPPL and the PSP better figure out a way to at least get a reasonable number of refs on the fields (or they'll keep hearing about from me--ooh, scary, I know)

 

[Mark]

other coverage

Originally posted by shamu
If you haven't seen it yet, paintball.com leads off their coverage of day 2 with the subject of reffing. Some interesting comments I've seen in other places include:

- refs wilting from the heat
- communications problems between euro reffing teams and other refs
- field setups are promoting faster play

anyway, here's the link for the paintball.com story:
http://www.paintball.com/features/story.cfm?placementID=1527

As one of the Euro Judges mentioned above I take exception to the supposed lack of communication between ourselves and our american counterparts, the only issue involved with the differing styles of speech presented itself when calling teams to get on deck (ready to play) as they didn't always hear the call clearly (I fixed this by asking an american to call for me if needed for the team I was waiting for, in the three days I only had to do this 4 times). Teams that didn't have english as their first language DID present problems but then that was going to happen anyway you slice it !!

"Other" sources are gonna be the teams that are screaming that they got screwed by the judges (this happens every year regardless of nationality !)

My field was accused of being 1 hour behind (I heard the accusation on the radio (I had 2, one for the field and one for the annoucement desk !!) when my field was visited by Stosh it was infact discovered that in reality I was 30 mins behind by the clock and only 2 games in play terms, plus during the entire tournament my field was permantly one game head of the field next to us (staffed totally by american judges, no digs intended but just used to show what a crock the "other" sources are !!)

The 5 man was reffed by both Pro and other judges and yes some were of the type who were just looking to fill a place (but every world cup is the same) The biggest thing that annoyed me was that all the captains were told at the captains meeting about presentation etc cos the cameras were there and Pball needed to look right and then when it came to the refs we all had a rag bag of differing outfits (we had to go begging to the various field sponsors to get a top to look like a judge....yes the Pros got their stripey tops but no one else).

When I came to play in the 10 man (we sucked but we got on with it) the lack of judges was crazy and most all the fields we played on had no name refs judging them (never saw a Pro ref but I'm sure they were there somewhere) the most I saw at any one time was 5 but generally it was 4

 

[Major]

reffing at the cup!!!

Its exactly what mark was saying!! But i do have one point to say is that it could of been RUN alot better

 

[crazypbkid]

the refs were low in numbers but in my games most of the calls were good and the refs pulled most of the guys quickly but my schedual was mest up at one point i got called to 3!!! different fields at once but the ultimates delt with it and it was all good. So for ten man the refs at fields 1,2,3,10 all did good jobs i dont know about the rest.
mike

 

[shamu]

post-Cup comments

I just got back from World Cup and have a couple more comments.

First, hats off to everyone who reffed in that heat. I played 10 man and coached one of the college Xball teams and it was damn hot. The refs put up with the heat all day in long sleeves and long pants and still did a pretty good job overall. The 10 man refs we had were, for the most part, pretty good.

However, I could see the difference between morning session and afternoon session, when they were tired and looked a bit slower to make some calls. Not implying the refs were lazy, just tired. I know a couple of the Xball refs went down from heat exhaustion. Mark - how were conditions for the refs? Were you guys supplied with enough water/gatorade, lunch, etc?

One thing that ticked me off was teams not showing up with enough players to ref. Whether they were worn out from the previous day, just hung over or just lazy I don't know. But four refs aren't enough for a 10 man field. We played one game where the other team fielded 11 players. We won so it wasn't a big deal but how does that get past the judge putting on arm bands???

To all the refs who came over from Europe - Thanks for making the trip. Let me know if you want me to come over there and ref any of the Millenium events

 

[Mark]

As regards Gatorade etc ....yes we (on my field got plenty) I even got a snow cone on day 1, the food thing was a little different as it arrived at 11 am and the only place within the schedule to take a break to eat it was at around 2 pm Grinola bars and their type were turning up all through the day, but then due to the apathy of teams to arrive at the fields on time (morning or afternoon) this wasn't that bad, only had two games bumped up to play out of sequence one on day 1 and one on day 2, the players seemed to be ok with the refs eating but then when you consider on my field we had anywhere up to 6 teams ready to go the turn around wasn't an issue (normally it was the two teams playing and the next two chrono-ed and ready to go before the playing game was half-way through).