After I stopped playing, the referee committee of my club LOHC (Leiden) encouraged me to do their Umpire+ training. That was a real challenge, not least because as a player I always thought I knew better. Maybe that was exactly the reason why they wanted me to experience the responsibility and difficulty of this task myself. And in the end, I really started to enjoy it. Eventually, I even became a referee for my club’s first men’s and women’s teams in their friendly matches, a nice honor. To this day, whenever I’m in the Netherlands, I still referee for my former team in the veteran ‘Hoofdklasse’. I still enjoy it. And I’m convinced: joy is something that whistling should always bring. But we all know that this is not always the case. There is a big challenge for Swiss Hockey: we have to get back to the point where it feels good to pick up the whistle. Several things are crucial for this: respect and recognition, quantity and quality.

Let’s start with respect. There is clearly room for improvement here. At the Indoor Final4, I experienced a fantastic, loud and enthusiastic atmosphere, but also a large number of negative reactions to refereeing decisions. That irritated me. That’s not how we should treat each other. What struck me most was that hardly anyone corrected this behavior: parents towards their children, partners towards each other, coaches towards players and vice versa or club officials towards everyone present. Even on the sidelines, parents are not always the best role models for our youngsters. In my President’s Corner in May, I will be writing specifically about us parents, so stay tuned.
For now, my message is clear: mutual respect must improve. And we can only do that together. That’s why we asked the General Assembly (AGM) last Saturday to recognize this as a common challenge. The AGM has given us the space to develop meaningful measures to strengthen our culture and the desired respect. At the start of next season, we will launch measures and focus communication in this regard. With the commitment of all clubs, we should be able to increase the number of referees. Getting young people involved, renewed or more intensive use of the Drillster tool and a focus on respect and recognition will help us.

And finally: quality. We referees should always strive to improve. We already receive honest feedback, learn from each other, attend training sessions and analyze match situations. But there is room for improvement here too. Together, the board, office and referee commission, we will develop a plan to (re)introduce these elements in a structured way.

If you have any ideas or would like to discuss something, please contact rob.mudde@swisshockey.org.

Best regards,
Rob Mudde