Now I don't know how easy this is to change but I think the refereeing situation within the SESL is long overdue overhaul. A quick look at the referees table shows almost total domination by Homer/Strict refs. I haven't checked my own fixtures but would be surprised if more than 80% did not involve a H/S ref.

There are potentially 6 possible combinations from the 5 attributes available and at present only 3 are in use, Homer/Strict, Strong/Loose and Strong/Fair. This leaves no place for Homer/Loose, Homer/Fair and Strong/Strict. In my opinion we should be using all of these.

My suggestion if it's feasible would be that we have 24 different referees as we potentially have that as our maximum amount of games from 48 teams. We should then have 4 of each sort of ref and they should be allocated on a random basis. I know some might feel this unfair as it's not always a level playing field but I feel it adds to the game if you have to overcome the ref as well. If need be there could be an adjustment meaning a certain amount of fixtures say 24 in the league handled by each of the 6 ref types say 4 times then leaving another 6 random.

I'm not sure how easy or difficult changes would be to implement but I'd be interested to see what other think as I don't think the refereeing situation at the moment gives us enough variety.

True, Homer/Loose, Homer/Fair and Strong/Strict need introducing.

Over to you Commish.

I tend to agree with you, Mark. I'm not sure how it's done on MSWL but I think that Commish here picks mostly Homer/Strict referees with a couple of Strong/Loose for each team. I'm pretty that I always get 2 Strong/Loose in one session and get them again with the reverse fixtures.

If it could be done completely random then I'd be all for it, with less Homer/Strict than now. It just gives the home side too much of an advantage in my opinion.

That is maybe the whole point - give the home side an advantage.

Afterall, in real life, we'd expect the home team to win more often than not?

What could be addressed is a 'spread' of refs and their attributes, but 'at the end of the day' and all that, its the same refs for us all, so does it really matter that much?

While the ref is not top of my priority list, I would tend to agree with Mr Boland that the refereeing situation at the moment does NOT give us enough variety.

Graham Poll has just retired in real life, so maybe a good time to retire him from SESL too.

And how about some 'special' referee's, like in the names of previous SESL Champions?

While it would only be a name, it may be a fitting tribute to past and present Div 1 winners to have them listed as SESL referee's now.
Thoughts?

I hear what you are all saying on this thread
and I agree the Ref situation needs addressed.

While the settings of individual refs can be changed
(and they will in next few weeks), however,
the allocation of each ref to a league match is
automatically assigned by Olmec and is random.

I can control the Cup refs as I need input each
cup fixture manually and individually, but
Olmec tends to use only the top 8 refs for
league games.

More variety, but less refs overall seems way forward.

--
Mark