Great strides have been made

"Spring break" started this past weekend and, per tradition, so did Rugby Week.  RW brings together the best high schools in the country for a three day tournament.  This year's U15 event is at HS Paarl Boys and each of us, plus some refs from elsewhere in SA, have been assigned one head ref and two AR assignments per day.  The games were recorded to DVDs for public purchase and, as a homework assignment, we were to watch our Saturday match and take notes on infringements called correctly, missed, and called incorrectly as well as anything other items we felt was notable.  Using this data we were to come up with two or three things to work on for our games on Monday.

Watching myself for the first time was surprisingly helpful.  I, of course, noticed my fair share of mistakes but I also saw that things I have been trying to fix or add to my game are working.  For example, my positioning has been an issue for as long as I have been a referee though I only recently began addressing it.  During games players would often be in my way so I couldn't clearly see the ball or I would be jostled by players because I was in their way.  Watching the tape, I saw that my positioning is almost a non-issue right now.  I flowed smoothly from phase to phase and was usually in a great position to at least see the ball and what was going on around it, even if I happened to be far from the action.

There were glaring issues in the first tape, however.  On a handful of occasions I was clearly not paying attention to players infringing right in front of me.  On other occasions my signals were not as crisp as could be.  I caught other problems but these two were the ones I wanted to fix first on Monday because they would be very easy to fix while smoothing out other wrinkles.

When it was time for Monday's game I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I am happy to say that I improved on both of the items I planned plus another item or two that the coaches have been hounding me about.  After watching the second tape I can honestly say that my game has improved greatly since I arrived here.  As I've said, we officiate so many games per week it is difficult to not step up our game but it was confidence building to actually see my work bear fruit.