Suggested Player Management

Suggested Player Management

This following article was published in Fair Play (Summer/Fall 1999, Volume 10, Issue 2) and was written by Rodney Kenney, a National Assessor from Florida. The article appears to be addressed to game officials at a higher level, however, I find the suggested eight steps to player management extremely useful to referees at any stage of their officiating path.

Please take a couple of minutes to read through and learn from the following paragraphs, I am sure you will find most if not all suggestions in them quite helpful. Whatever you take from this article to the field, it will certainly improve your personal performance, enable more controlled and safer games, and will increase player appreciation for your efforts.

Cheers,

Wolf Antoni
President, VCSRA, Inc.

Eight Steps to Player Management

In the beginning, refereeing is about knowing the laws, proper field mechanics, and controlling the match by the book. At the lower levels that might be all you need to know to be an adequate referee. But if you want to move to the next level of refereeing, your people management skills will play a major role in your success.

The step is difficult, but not impossible. If you keep an open mind and are willing to apply these eight steps for better player management, you can develop the leadership qualities you need to be a successful referee at the higher levels.

Step one: Appear confident in all decisions you make. Player perception of your competence starts with the way you’re dressed and how you carry yourself – your body language. You must remain calm no matter how nervous you feel or what is happening in the game. You must be like the duck that is swimming up stream from the waterfall, calm above the water but paddling like crazy below. “Never let them see you sweat.” Your confidence shows in your ability to control your emotions while under stress. Many referees take an arrogant attitude to mask their lack of confidence, thinking it puts them in control. Be careful: Players can tell the difference between arrogance and confidence. Players will always try to prove that an arrogant referee is not as good as he thinks he is.
Step two: Be a good listener. Don’t listen for things that offend you. On the contrary, try to shut offending comments out, but listen to what players are saying to you and one another about the game. Most referees shut out players’ chatter as gripping or whining. Sometimes they are conveying information that can help in game control. The “mind game” can sometimes lead to more problems for the referee then the physical game. The medium for the mind game is talk and if you aren’t tuned in, you’ll miss the early warning signs and end up with a physical confrontation between players and wonder what happened.
Step three: Be a good communicator. Communicate with the players; let them know what you feel about their actions and what you are seeing. Let them know what the consequences of their actions will be. Remind them of where they are in the game: why are they, committing needles fouls in the last 2 minutes of the game when they are up 4-0; don’t they realize they already have a caution in the game. When you see a player getting frustrated, communicate with that player in a positive way to keep him in the game. Never use foul or abusive language while addressing a player. How can you expect to deal with inappropriate language from players if you use it? Stay away from terms such as “son”, “boy” or “sweetheart.” Don’t call a player by name. Remember that it is not so much what you say, but how and when you say it.
Step four: Be aware of the key players. Don’t let the key players be unduly intimidated. You must recognize when a single player is continually fouled. At the higher levels, players will “line up” to foul a key player so as to cover up persistent infringement. This type of persistent infringement is more difficult to identify than when one player is doing all the fouling. If you allow this to go on, one of three things will happen: They will foul the player until he is too hurt to go on and has to be substituted, the player will take things into his own hands and get sent of for retaliation, or the player will quit being effective and will be substituted. All of these actions are effective in eliminating a team’s best player.
Step five: Learn to read players’ reactions. This is a critical skill to learn in order to manage players. For example, a defender makes a hard fair tackle and takes the ball away from an opponent. The attacker gets up with more determination than is normal and goes after the defender, who has taken the ball. You know that the subsequent tackle will not be as fair as the first one, and you need to be there when it happens to deal with the situation. If you read it in time, you could prevent a foul by being close enough to tell the attacker not to foul the opponent. Another example to consider is when a tackle looks bad, yet the tackled player shows no adverse reaction to it. That will help you to decide what disciplinary action is necessary and may keep you from overreacting. Finally, have you ever seen a player swing at another, and when you blow your whistle the player who was swung at runs away? It is likely that he was the one who started it, just by his reaction, so maybe two cautions are needed instead of one red card.
Step six: Know all you can about the teams, and the game you are about to referee. You need to know who are the skilled players, who are the enforcers, as much about the players’ personalities as possible, the teams’ style of play, and what this game means to each team. How can you get this information?

Watch the teams play, talk to referees who have refereed the teams, review player statistics. Know the significance of the game. What was the outcome of previous meetings between the two teams? Review the team’s standings in this competition. This will give you clues to what the intensity level of this game may be and how the players may react during the game. The more you know before the game, the more able you can be proactive, rather than reactive.
Step seven: Have a thorough pre-game. The pre-game is one of your most important management tools. Review with your assistants and fourth official what you expect from them in such player-management situations as substitutions, injuries, altercations on the field, problems with coaches and spectators, incidents behind your back, mistakenly giving a second caution without sending off the player, and bench management. The more prepared the referee team is to deal with player management problems, the more successful the referee team will be in any game.
Step eight: Get something for your discipline (warning, caution, send-off). Understand that discipline is not a remedy for what has already happened, but a deterrent for future undesirable actions. Be willing to set the standard early in the match. This is often called “the moment of truth.” How you handle the first major incident puts the players on notice about what you will and will not accept. Be careful to apply only the amount of discipline that is necessary to get the players to modify their disruptive actions. Over-disciplining can sometimes be more destructive to a game then the lack of discipline. Hopefully your actions at this point in the game will prevent the need for further discipline. If you do have to use the ultimate discipline (send-off) you should always ask yourself after a game, “What could I have done to manage the players better”? Likely, you will find that, if you had applied the eight steps, the red card might not have been necessary.

These eight steps are far from all the player management techniques that exist, but I think these will get you thinking about how important player management is to being a successful high-level referee.