Whole team behaving badly (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
There were a couple of situations at Unicon where a whole team behaved badly. For example one of my teams had a lot of citations for high stick, a team they played against played a rough game on them, and in a game I was ref'ing one teams players constantly had the free end of their sticks exposed (because the sticks were too long).
I wish all teams would come prepared and knowing the rules at all competitions but that's not the case unfortunately, and sometimes one or the other teams are repeatedly breaking a rule. I'm not sure how it can be handled in the general sense or if it requires a new rule to be written, but I feel it's something that organizers need to think about especially when there might be a language barrier as is often the case at Unicon. One solution might be to stop the game and get the coach to explain the rule for the team and require all teams with young players to have a coach ready to explain these things.
Comment
Magnus "... but I feel it's something that organizers need to think about...". In general I agree. Newcomers on UNICONs use the advantage to learn something on team sport like hockey. This teams may require a coach from other nations or experienced teams. Part of the problem might be money. The hockey director has not given enough hours in a gym hall for more practise time.
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Let me just clarify here: there should be room for newcomers, but there's no policy in the rules about how to address this situation. Personally I would be inclined to stop the game, talk to the offending team and let them know that I'll stop the game at each foul and they may get a lot of two minute penalties. This is not clear in the rules however.
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The problem with UNICON Magnus was two-fold.
Firstly, Zero referee meetings as the hockey director turned up at the venue 20 minutes after the competition had started and secondly not enough good referees.
The problem you faced was actually a referee issue/tournament director issue.
Refrees for B and C meant to be provided by B and C teams however most B and C teams had little experience at refereeing and no referee meeting was given to provide and overview of things to look for. The countries that had decent referees were not allowed to ref their own games for obvious reasons and also it can get tiring reffing every single match of a day because other teams aren't good enough.
I don't think we need a rule in place for entire teams behaving badly. I think we need better setup from the beginning and better referees to enforce and see rule breaking. At European champs in 2017 teams from A comp reffed B comp. At UNICON only two countries from the A comp went to the B and C comps and one of those was not experienced at reffing.
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This seems to be a Hockey Director issue, and not a rulebook issue.
All teams and players are required to know the rules before they compete. If they break the rules, they should be penalized appropriately.
If refereeing is an issue, it should also be down to the Hockey Director to organize this correctly.
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If people want to discuss these things we can probably provide it to the IUF to place in the directors instructions for Unicon. Currently there is a list of what a director should do but some of these things regarding tournament structure and referee meetings could be added.
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Yeah, I agree it was an absolute shitshow with regards to reffing and that was more of an issue.
That said, I did ref one game where the end of the stick was not covered by one of the teams. Apart from calling it at each instance I'm not sure what options the rulebook gives me.
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I believe warning a player on the team and telling them if anyone else does it they will get 2 mins in the penalty box and then sending a player off would get the message across pretty quick. The referee can also call timeout in the rules and if you wanted you can use it to tell the team.
In one of the C games I penalised multiple players across two teams as they both kept fouling, the teams were young and didn't speak English. I couldn't get the game started without them fouling so at the halftime break I talked to the teams coaches and told them to tell all the players. That sorted (that particular foul) for the rest of the comp.
Comment
Summary:
Not currently for the rulebook
However need to ensure tournament director has referee meetings at Unicon. Also of benefit may be for the tournament director to get a point of contact for each team who they has the ability to tell the entire team in a language they speak what they are doing wrong in the case of entire teams not understanding a rule.
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I agree, this discussion is not a rulebook issue for hockey. Probably this may becomes an issue for the main committee because bad behavier of a group or team should be a responsibility of the main committee or the board of directors.
I propose to close this discussion.
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I think you're right – and I actually have a couple of proposals for the main committee around this.
Ultimately I hope we'll all have the chance to get together and discuss how we want to run next years tournament and ensure enough refs so the issues from this years competition won't repeat, something that's beyond the scope of this committee.
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I would like to close this discussion but I am unable as for whatever reason they cant seem to give me the ability.
Consider this closed