SquashTalk >Columns > Refeeing > Rod Symington

Squash Refereeing in the 21st Century
by Rod Symington © 2004 R Symington and SquashTalk LLC

Rod Symington is an experienced world-class referee and involved in the WSF Rules and Referees Committee

PERSON ONE: "Let's play a game. Imagine what would happen if a sport chose to frame its rules in such a way that the official charged with making a large number of subjective decisions was placed in the most disadvantageous position imaginable."

PERSON TWO: "You mean like a football game, if the referee had to sit up in the twenty-fifth row of the stands and shout out his decisions from there."

PERSON ONE:"Yes, something like that. Can you think of another analogy?"

PERSON TWO:"Yes - a fencing match, where the umpires were compelled to sit in a hot-air balloon tethered 1000 feet above the action, and call out the "hits" from on high."

PERSON ONE:"Hey, you're getting good at this! How about one more for good measure?"

PERSON TWO:"A diving competition, where the judges would have to lie on the bottom of the pool wearing scuba gear and watch through goggles as the divers jump into the water."

PERSON ONE:"Very good. But I'll tell you my favourite: squash - but there would be no need to change the rules, because they already place the referee in an impossible situation."

PERSON TWO: "Of course! How silly of me! You're right: it's the one sport that chooses to hamper the referee as much as possible so that the decisions will always be contentious."

Referee - tucked away high in the crowd, away from the court.

The above dialogue is, of course, fictitious and a slight exaggeration - but only a slight one. Because the fact of the matter is that the officials in a squash match are regularly placed in positions equivalent to the imaginary ones described aboye. As we all know, it is quite common for the officials in important squash matches (such as the Final of the British Open) to be placed twenty rows back, looking through a (not always completely transparent) glass wall, attempting to judge What is happening on court. The inevitable result is that the officials are too far away and at the wrong angle to be able to judge what is happening on court, and yet both players and spectators expect the officials to make correct decisions every time. It is a state of affairs that is both scandalous and mystifying. It is scandalous because it is permitted to continue year after year; and it is mystifying because it is within the power of the ruling bodies of squash to change the situation.

Complaints about refereeing in squash are not merely commonplace, they are of epidemic proportions. And the epidemic continues to flourish without abating year after year. Not a week goes by without there being some "scandal" somewhere in the world about the refereeing in a match (or even an entire tournament). 1 know of no other sport where the complaints about the competence of refereeing/officiating/judging are so universal and so persistent. And there is surely no other sport on earth where the players so often begin a match praying that the referee will be competent and the decisions consistent.

And yet, for some strange and inexplicable reason, when the question of changing the system of refereeing in squash is brought up, it elicits more rigidity and close-mindedness than almost any other topic. The sport is conservative to the point of blindness. The evidence that the single Referee (plus Marker) system is severely flawed is overwhelming, yet there is no common will to do something about it.

The Marker/Referee system has been in place for so long, it has become sacrosanct: even to suggest the system is inadequate is equivalent to blasphemy. (So I blaspheme.) Other sports have taken the initiative in changing their rules to make the game more attractive, to eradicate abuses, and to improve the officiating. Why has squash been so slow to change? Let us look at the options.

1. Marker/Referee System

A better but still static, referee's position.

Let us be absolutely clear about one incontrovertible fact: the Marker/Referee system contains a fatal flaw, in that it is conceptually wrong and can never be fixed. Any refereeing system that relies on one referee in a static position to judge the actions of players who are moving will always be inferior and inadequate. Imagine a football game (all variations) or a hockey game (both ice and field) in which the referee was told to stay in one place and make his decisions from there. Ridiculous and unthinkable? Yes, but that is, in effect, what happens in squash: players move around, yet the referee must remain still and attempt to make decisions from a position of clear disadvantage. Admittedly, squash takes place within in a much more confined space than an event such as football or basketball or hockey, but the same principle applies: the referee (unipire/judge) must be able to place himself in a position to see the play from the best possible vantage-point. A fixed position in a highly mobile sport will always be an inferior vantage-point.

Obviously, it would be impractical in squash for the referee to move around during a rally. But even when he is seated in the location dictated by the Rules, the Referee is in the wrong place to make all the most critical decisions. The vast majority of those critical decisions take place over to one side of the court - either near the left wall or the right wall - and consequently, a referee located even in the recommended position (in the middle of the back wall and sitting above it) is in a disadvantageous position to make a decision. In fact, if you analyze carefully what actually happens in the referee's mind, you come to an astonishing conclusion: the referee guesses - and he does so many times during a match. The refusal to face up to this fact (namely, that the referee guesses) is the major stumbling-block to progress in squash officiating.

Does the referee know what happened? (photos © 2005 Debra Tessier)

For example, the player hits a shot down the left-hand wall. However, the shot is loose and comes out from the side wall by a foot or two. As the outgoing striker moves out of the way towards the middle of the court, the opponent moves across to the ball, believes that the player is in the way of a direct shot to the front wall and calls let. The referee now has to make a decision from a position where he cannot properly see what has happened. One thing must be perfectly clear: the referee is most definitely not in the ideal position to make the decision: only a person directly in line with the players can see if the outgoing striker is clear or not. In some of the most difficult decisions that the Referee has to make - where one player is getting out of the way and the other is moving across to hit the ball ("crossing the flight"), the Referee is in the wrong place almost every time. (That's why in a crowded gallery you often hear the spectators on the side of the court where the episode has just occurred groan at the Referee's decision: they saw clearly what happened, while the Referee was forced to guess -- wrongly.)

The defense to this system is that the referee makes a judgment based on past experience and probabilities, but these are simply euphemisms used to cloak the fact that the referee guesses: in his mind the Referee translates what he sees ftom the wrong angle into an image that conforms to what he thinks he would have seen ftom the correct angle. Once you have come to realize that this is what the referee does, it must be clear that the situation is ripe for error - and as we all well know, many errors do occur. It is the reason why so many novice referees have difficulty judging the close calls: they can't translate in their minds what they see from the middle of the back-wall to what they would have seen if they had been directly in line with the play.

In all other sports that I can think of where subjective decisions are made, there is a team of referees, umpires or judges. In many sports the officials move around so that they have the best view. In some sports the subjective decision that an infraction has occurred or a play was good or bad is taken by the official who is in the best position - or by officials consulting together (and sometimes with the aid of video playbacks). In other sports, to reduce the element of subjectivity as much as possible, the decision is rendered by the whole team of officials (and in some cases - where a competitor is given a score - the possible element of bias or incompetence is lessened by throwing out the bottom and top scores). Only squash stubbornly insists on leaving subjective decisions in the hands of one badly situated individual; and only squash adamantly refuses to introduce a refereeing system that will reduce the number of controversial decisions and improve the quality of the decision-making process.

What would any rational system of squash refereeing do? It would place a referee in a position where such decisions could be made from the best possible vantage-point. Thus, for episodes that take place near the left-hand wall, there would be a referee on that side of the court behind the back wall. For episodes that take place on the right-hand wall, there would be a referee on that side in the best position to make the decision. The system is so simple, so rational, so obvious, that not to put it in place requires an act of willful negligence.

Not only the bad positioning of the referee in the conventional Marker/Referee system leads to questionable decisions; there are other factors as well:

i) The stress on a squash referee is enormous - and most referees cannot handle it. (There aren't more than a handful of referees in the world who could referee, for example, a British Open Final without collapsing under the strain.) Placed in a major final, most squash referees experience a level of stress that had a negative effect on their judgement and effectiveness. In effect, they fake it, appearing to be in control of their emotions when they are really quaking in their pants.

ii) Far too often the match becomes a hand-to-hand confrontation between two egos. There is, in any case, far too much ego in squash refereeing. Many referees love the challenge of refereeing a squash match alone, and 1 have heard some referees express great joy at having refereed a difficult match - not because the decisions were correct and the result fair, but because it gave the referee intense personal pleasure to be in that situation. Ifs the wrong attitude.

iii) One bad decision from a referee under stress can poison the atmosphere of a match, undermine the players' confidence in the referee's competence, and lead to an ugly game.

iv) The player who needles the referee is hoping to unfairly influence the referee in his favour. More often than not the referee's confidence is undermined, and bad decisions for both players are the result.

In conclusion: the Marker/Referee System is a failure - and no amount of training or tinkering with it will alter that fact.

2. The Two Referee System.
In this system there is a Referee (who also keeps score) and an Appeals Referee, whose decision on appeal is final. Just like the Marker/Referee system, the Two Referee system cannot work. You are simply placing two referees in the wrong place. In addition, the advantage of having two referees agree about a decision is greatly outweighed by the terrible image created when they disagree.

3. The Three Referee System.
The Three Referee system was tried sporadically for a couple of , bit it was never given a legitimate trial, because it was a) not applied properly, and b) not used for long enough. The players attempted to abuse the system by appealing every decision. The press did not like the system because there were never any confrontations between the players and the referee and they had no controversies to write about. The advantages of the Three Referee System are as follows:

i) All three referees tend to have more self-confidence because they are working as a team, not alone. There less pressure on each individual and far less likelihood of a referee "cracking" under the strain. (In fact, I have never seen referees so relaxed as when using this system.)

ii) There are no egregiously bad calls. If the central referee makes a clearly bad decision (which can happen when the Referee is under pressure), the other two referees can be relied upon to overrule him and eradicate the "bad" call that can easily poison the atmosphere of a match.

iii) Players behave much better, and confrontations are virtually eliminated. How do you argue with a committee?

iv) The quality of decision-making is much improved. Over the course of a tournament, the number of correct decisions using the Three Judge System has been proven to be significantly higher than using the Referee/Marker system.

Unfortunately, it was falsely assumed that any referee who had been trained to use the Referee/Marker system could automatically use the Three Referee System too. Nothing could be ftwther from the truth. To use the Three Referee System effectively, referees need adequate training in its use. The failure to train referees was one of the major factors in the failure of the system.

The disadvantages are:

i) Players can try to make a mockery of the system by appealing every initial call. This can easily be stopped by the referee saying (at the first sign that players were abusing the system) that any future frivolous appeals would be penalised. (It works.)

ii) The major disadvantage of the system is the fact that in a "split" decision, the deciding vote is often cast by the referee with the worst view of the situation. For example, a player asks for a let on the left-hand wall. The central referee says: "Yes, let." The player appeals. The Referee on the left wall (who is in the best position) says: "Stroke." The referee on the right-hand wall - furthest away from the play and with the worst view - now has to cast the deciding vote. (In practice, this referee was instructed to say "stroke" only if he was absolutely certain that it was a stroke.) This is a serious objection to the system, but there is a solution to this defect (see below).

iii) It requires more officials to run a tournament. This is a minor objection (which has never, to my knowledge, been a genuine impediment in practice). Many other sports use multiple-official systems, and they are able to supply the number of officials needed. With the expansion of squash officiating programmes around the world, the number of qualified officials is increasing every year.

The Three Referee System has much to recommend it, and with a few simple modifications would prove itself far superior to any other refereeing system for squash.

The New Proposal: The Modified Three Referee System.
This system would use three referees, one in the centre and one on each side (as under the "conventional" Three Referee System). If we imagine the court being divided into three sectors, then each of the referees would be responsible for all episodes in his or her sector of the court. When a player calls let, the referee with the best vantage-point makes the decision, which is final. There are no appeals possible under this system.

It will be obvious whose decision it is for many situations, but there will be some situations that occur "on the boundary", so somebody must decide which official is to make that decision. We cannot risk having two decisions being given because both officials assume it is their area, especially if those two decisions are different. Thus the central referee would be in overall charge, and either give a decision for situations in his area, or call on either the "lefv' or "right" official to give a decision in other cases. This assignment of the call may also be extended to marking calls, such as dubious pickups or shots just hitting the top of the tin, where an official on one side has a much clearer view than the one in the middle. Whatever decision is made is made by the official with the best view, and there can be no appeal.

The referee in the middle would also handle all of the other "traditional" duties such as conduct penalties, injury rulings, time keeping, etc.

The objection will inevitably be raised that three referees will have different standards and that the decision-making will therefore be uneven. Other sports that use a multiple official system accept the fact that the official who makes the call might have slightly different standards than the next person - but 1 have never heard a commentator or spectator raise the issue of different standards. Those sports a) accept the fact that different officials might have slightly different standards, and b) work to educate the officials so that they are all on the same page and applying the same parameters.

There is no ideal position for a squash referee: every position has its disadvantages. And similarly, every system of refereeing is going to be imperfect, because it depends on human beings and their imperfect judgements. But the important point surely is to search for the best system that produces the highest percentage of correct decisions and the greatest player satisfaction. We know that the present Referee/Marker system is severely flawed, and owe it to the sport of squash to try to improve the game.

Does squash wish to present to the world a better image, with less controversy, better behaviour on court and more correct decisions? Does squash wish to attract more sponsors and gain entry into the Olympic Games? Does squash wish to enter the twenty-first century?