BJA competition - referee positioning

I've been pondering writing this a post about this for some time, but never quite got round to it. 

So perhaps I'm a bit late amongst Judo bloggers to share some thoughts on the move to place the 2 judges to the side of the mat rather than on the corners of the mat, but here it is.

When a Judo contest is under way there are 3 referees watching the match and making decisions on the basis of majority decisions. 

It used to be that one central referee would make decisions about a contest, the judges, positioned at opposite corners of the contest area, would indicate if they agreed or not with the central referee. When there is a split decision, the decision is decided by 2/3.

A few years back the IJF (the international Judo body) decided this didn't look very good for TV, so the judges were moved to one edge of the mat. 

I've not (yet)been involved with international refereeing. To be honest I'm not yet sure if I want to be! 

So for now I'll restrict this post to discussion about British Judo Association licensed events.

There has been a lot of discussion in Facebook groups and forums since the changes to judge position, a lot of the comments are coming from a place of a coach or player, not referees.

So as a  Judo player, coach and referee I thought I'd try and provide some thoughts. Again, based on my experience of up to national level events (in the UK), not international.

In favour of Judges at mat side

Video replay

More and more domestic events (UK) have been using video replay, which is available to the judge at matside. Obviously this would be impossible with the old system of judges on opposite corner of the mat.

Some people seem to think video replay is a bad thing, I fail to see how being able to check a decision is a bad thing.

Referee training / mentoring

Senior referees are able to explain their decisions and help develop less experienced referees while using video replay system. This development of referees is, to me, perhaps the main advantage that gets missed in discussions of the change by non-refs and has proven invaluable in my own development learning from senior refs and how they read actions.

Quick decisions

With judges on the mat, it was not unusual to see the referee see a signal from one judge but not the other (various reasons, eg judge not holding signal long enough) resulting in decision not being changed.

Many times we would see the referee call the judges in to discuss the action and come to a decision. This takes time. With judges together on the side of the mat, they can announce an opinion to one another and if need be signal to the central referee. The central referee then knows to change the decision (2 of 3 rule).

Not distracting the referee

With judges on the mat, if one has a different opinion he signals, if it is only one judge with a differing opinion potentially this causes referee to take eye off the contest for no reason. 

With 2 judges together, there is no risk to distracting referee as the decision is made before deciding whether there is a need to inform the referee there is a change needed.

Remember I'm involved in relatively low level events most of the time where many refs are very much in the process of gaining experience and confidence.

Staying awake!

I was in two minds about including this one. The last thing I want to do is offend anyone!

Anyone involved in low level events will have seen corner judges apparently lose concentration (once or twice even fall asleep!). 

With judges together at the side of the mat, discussions around actions will hopefully force both to stay focussed!

 

In favour of judges on the mat

Viewing angles

With a the judges together on one side of the mat, the viewing angles are reduced from 3 down to 2 (the video tends to have same view as the judges, at least in the UK).

To my mind the advantages of being able to review and discuss an action outweighs the loss of the 3rd angle.

Plenty of coaches seem to think it only needs a single angle to get it right anyway ;)

No-video situations

There are some low level events where video replay is not available. There may be an argument for judges on the mat in this situation. However I would maintain the benefits of quick discussion and support of junior refs outweighs the advantage of the 3rd view.

Ongoing thoughts

This is a subject that gets a lot of discussion online in the Judo community, so I fully expect to make additions to this post to address opinions as they come up.