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Football Federation Australia today moved to improve the sometimes prickly lines of communication between coaches, players and referees by announcing match officials will hold pre-meetings with coaches and captains prior to matches in this season’s A-League football competition.
The revamped national competition enters its fourth season later this week.
Dutchman Mario Van der Ende, who the FFA today appointed as their interim national referees technical director, revealed the findings of his review of Australian match officiating standards systems and practices.
Van der Ende, who refereed at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, is generally happy with Australian refereeing standards.
He said he had got plenty of feedback from coaches and referees over the past couple of months.
“I always say you can learn from each other, I have very valuable feedback from media, players and the players’ association, they all came with recommendations,” Van der Ende said.
“Starting this season there will be a pre-meeting before the games with coaches, captains and referees.
“A small conversation can improve the whole relationship.”
Van der Ende said the meetings would take place while teams warmed up and could last any time between 15 seconds and five minutes.
He stressed individual coaches would not be allowed to have a separate meeting with the match official.
“Because otherwise maybe you get (one coach saying) `with him he (the referee) takes five minutes, with me only 20 seconds’. We have to be very careful about this.”
Van der Ende said both football’s world governing body FIFA and the Asian Confederation were both happy and confident of the standard of Australian referees.
He said the main complaint A-League coaches had about match officials was the offside rulings of the assistant referees.
“They each called it frustrating sometimes and then I said (to them) `do you have feedback, do you see the game afterwards’ and they said `yes, we do’.
“Then I said `how many times were you wrong and the assistant was wrong’, and believe me the coaches were (more often) wrong than the assistants.”
Van der Ende revealed some of the coaches had candidly admitted they hadn’t recently read up on the sport’s laws.
“I interviewed all of the coaches and they were very honest, some of them never saw a law book for the last five or six years,” Van der Ende said.
He said the major feedback he got from Australian referees was that they were mostly concerned with improving their standards.
He stressed the importance of communication and hinted there could be more interaction between referees and the media.
Van der Ende suggested referees could be allowed to explain their decisions more frequently to the press provided they underwent some form of media training to prepare them for their dealings with that group.
“In my opinion we can be more open, but all the referees must be ready for that,” Van der Ende said.
He suggested referees undergo a course in media training as part of their development pathway.
The FFA is poised to reveal details on Thursday of their revamped disciplinary system which is expected to include the formation of a match review committee and allowing the media to cover most judiciary hearings, from which they are currently excluded.
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