International Referee Report
Report Prepared By: John Bennett
Event Covered By Report: Swatch-FIVB World Tour Event - Jinshan China Open 2006 (Men & Women)
Date: May 23-28, 2006
Venue: Jinshan Beach, Shanghai, CHINA
Accomodation: Jinshan Hotel, approx 5 minutes drive or 20 minutes walk to stadium
Referee Delegate: Jóse Casanova
Technical Supervisor: Blair Harrison
Due to various reasons, this event was the first time I had refereed men at a World Tour event since the Sydney 2000 Olympics. No disrespect to the top players in Australia, but I’d forgotten just how tough the top level of competition can be. Actually, that statement is more of a credit to our top players; while we may think they carry on like pratts occasionally, the fact is they are a lot better behaved than some (most) of the World’s best. I know there’s the odd bit of chat under the net here, but at least I’ve never seen any of our players being restrained by their partners… Thankfully that happened on a game I was only watching.
There are two new rules being tested this season; the ‘Net Contact Test’ which we implemented in Australia last Summer, and a ‘new’ court switch protocol. Being the first event for the men, and the second for the women, a large part of our role was educating players. This caused a few minor problems, but we didn’t have one protest for the entire tournament, so I guess the message got across!
Net Contact Test:
Since we implemented this rule over our Summer here I won’t spend much time on this. The rule is very clear, and the only problem players had was defining exactly what constituted ‘in the action of playing the ball’. In my experience, if you were able to effectively communicate what you had seen, the players were quite happy.
The other point regarding this rule is that players at this level rarely touch the net in the first place. We were asked to complete a questionnaire after each match regarding how many net touches we did & didn’t call, how much it effected the game, how the players reacted etc, and I only had to write comments after about 3 games (out of 20).
The one other point that was clarified at this event was that touching the net outside of the antenna was NOT a fault. I’m sure most of you were already aware of this; to be honest it’s one of those rules that never stuck in my mind, so I was quite happy to have this confirmed by the boss himself, Jóse Casanova.
Court Switch Protocol:
In order to prevent possibly volatile situations at court switches, players must now be prevented from changing sides until authorised by the second referee’s whistle & signal. The main intent behind this ruling is to prevent protests regarding ball marks near the sidelines. (Apparently this was prompted by a situation where a player took a photo of a ball mark after changing sides, then protested at the conclusion of the match using the photo as evidence). This ruling ensures that a player must ask for a ball mark protocol BEFORE changing ends; once a court switch has been authorised, no further debate will be entered into regarding the previous rally.
As this was the women’s second tournament and the men’s first, there were many habits to break. We had an educational role only for the first couple of days, which involved just giving a couple of pips on the whistle to let the players know that they had to wait next time. This would only happen once or twice for each player, and within the first few matches most old habits were gone.
The tournament:
Being a double-gender event (my first), we were expecting a fairly large workload. However, we were lucky enough to have quite a large contingent of highly competent referees – 7 Neutrals and 11 Locals, including 6 Internationals. Since this was the third event in Shanghai (I think) and the country is preparing for the 2008 Olympics, the standard of all officials was very high. We had the usual language problems with the high-school aged ball retrievers, but since we were almost always working with a Chinese referee, these issues were quickly resolved.
The venue itself was outstanding; it would appear to be a permanent venue which is a little surprising given it’s remote location, just over an hour out of Shanghai. These remote venues seem to be the go in China; regardless, they still seem to achieve reasonable crowds most days. The fact that some of these crowds are marched straight out of the nearby schools and into the stands doesn’t really matter; they all seemed to get quite involved in the spirit of the tournament.
First thing about China is the ever present haze of pollution which prevents the sky from ever being actually blue. Along with this, we had some wild variations in the weather over the week. The first day (Tuesday) was quite surreal; there was a fog hanging over the entire beach, which isn’t in itself so strange. What made it bizarre were the thousands and thousands of small white butterflies floating across the courts for the entire day. No idea where they came from, but it only lasted for the day. The following day was hot, mid 30’s or so, with very little wind. Thursday brought rain, with some drenching downpours during the day, which I somehow managed to miss the worst of. The showers tapered off Friday morning for the men’s quarter’s & semi’s, but the worst was to come on Saturday, with howling winds tearing through the venue. Fortunately we were down to the women’s quarter’s & semi’s and the men’s finals, and all games were played on centre court. This provided enough protection from the wind to allow the matches to continue; if we needed the outside courts that day we would’ve had to postpone matches. As it was games ran quite late, requiring the stadium lights to be turned on for the final women’s semi-final. Thankfully the weather fined up for Sunday, the final day.
The women’s results were excellent for China, finishing first, second and fourth. As I refereed the women’s Bronze match, I almost felt liked I’d spoilt the party! The men’s teams faired quite well also, finishing 9th, 13th and 17th.
Other Refereeing Issues:
The feedback from Jóse at the beginning of the tournament was that as of the end of last year, referees had set quite a good standard for double-contacts, but the standard for the held ball needed to tightened up. Since I hadn’t seen the men play in so many years, it took me a little bit to get ‘up to speed’ with the various techniques, but I didn’t feel that I had too many issues during the week. Jóse did say at the end of the tournament that we needed to raise the level a little more, but overall was happy with the week.
Personally I was rated a 9, with good/very good feedback and the following comments:
- Ball contact control was good overall, but needed to closely watch the length of contact during the setting action
- Need to be more decisive/authoritative with players in certain situations.
After such a long break from the men, I was quite happy with my performance over the week. They are at a different level to the women (not that the women are a piece of cake), jumping on you at the slightest opportunity, making sure you are on the ball (no pun intended) every moment.
Miscellaneous:
Breakfast and dinner were provided at the hotel buffet, and was an improvement on the hotels I have previously stayed in. Lunch was served at the venue, and was ‘interesting’… Needless to say I wasn’t surprised to find that I’d lost a few kilos when I returned to Australia. Half the time I only ate the rice & soup, and took as much fruit as I could get away with.
On the Saturday night we were treated to dinner in Shanghai, which is a spectacular city. Highways above highways, with high-rise buildings trying to outdo each other’s fluorescent light displays. We also visited the light display on the harbour which was spectacular, as you can see in the photo below.
On a lighter note, I never thought I’d see a woman with a better right-foot than Anthony Rocca! At the conclusion of their semi-final loss, Juliana of Brazil was so frustrated that she booted the ball out of the stadium, and it couldn’t have been struck any better. Blair & I had a good laugh at the sight of the ball sailing gracefully over the grandstand, but Larissa wasn’t laughing when he fined her US$250, although apparently she took it quite well.
It’s funny the things you take for granted here in Australia. I had two referees tell me that they’d been to Australia since the last time I had been in China, and both made the same comment: ‘You have such beautiful blue skies’. You really don’t think about it until it’s not there, at which point it becomes quite depressing to only ever see a grey haze in the sky. Shanghai is a spectacular city of over 17 million people, but I could never imagine spending more than a week there. I guess you can look at it two ways; one, you’d probably get used to it over time; and two, if you grew up in China and never went overseas, you’d possibly never know what you were missing out on.
Overall this tournament ran smoothly from start to finish. The Chinese are becoming very proficient in all areas of tournament management, which bodes well for Beijing 2008. This was by far the most enjoyable of my 4 events in China, and (despite the pollution) I look forward to returning to China in the future.
