Dear referees of PYSC,

Welcome to the new season of 2011.

The 2011 Season starts on Monday May 9 , 2011 and it ends at the end of August. Our games are from Monday to Thursday, at 6:30 p.m. The schedule is posted on our website. During the season, there may be some modification to it, depending on weather and field conditions. You will be informed of those changes by me. However, check our website regularly.

                                                                                                  PROCEDURES:

-         When you email me, you must provide your first or/and last name, since I need it to identify you, otherwise the info will be insufficient and the email will be ignored. ( there are few refs who have the same first or/and last name)

-         You can not request a certain field or age division. You singed up to ref, not to ref only in your neighborhood. What and where you referee depends on the available games, ref’s classification and on the discretion of the head referee.

-         When you email me with your availability on Fridays ( starting from this Friday, May 6), remember that the deadline to report your availability is 9:30 p.m. After that, I am working on the schedule, so I can not promise you any games, if you reported your availability after 9:30 p.m. Remember that you MUST reply to the game assignment email that you will receive during weekend from me to confirm your assignment and you must do so before the 9:30 p.m. deadline of Sunday, otherwise the game will be assigned to someone else. When you reply to my email to confirm your assignment, please state: I confirm my assignment.

-         I will send your assignment as an attachment. Click on the attachment and it will open the spreadsheet. On it, you will find all the games played that day and the referees’ names, amongst which you will find your name and your game assignment.  

-        Some of you were still wondering about the game sheets: Until few seasons ago, the refs had to write all the information required by the statistician on the spot, which meant, each time a player scored, you had to write down their names. There were a few difficulties with that, such as: writing on bad weather, trying to get the spelling of the player’s name right, difficulties getting the right information from a player who had just received a yellow card or red card and would refuse to give his name, difficulties writing a special incident report when you didn’t have the names of all the players on the field, difficulties trying to allow a player on the field who claimed that was a trade player or call up player but you as a ref had no document to prove it and no team list with the player’s name on it. As you can see, there were a lot of issues. To avoid all these issues, for reasons of liability and to allow the refs to do their job efficiently, OSA and ECOSA sent out guidelines which, in simple words, meant: Game sheets strongly recommended, however they didn't go far enough to state mandatory. Under these circumstances, I, as the head referee, took action and contacted all the coaches, notifying them that they would have to provide a game sheet at the beginning of the game and in that game sheet they should clearly indicate all the names of their players and the corresponding jersey numbers and if they are using a call up player or trade player. The letter sent to the coaches it is still posted on our website under referee’s corner. On the other hand, to accommodate the coaches in their limited time, I posted on our web site a game sheet for you to print. Just print it out and have it with you on the field. It is very simple and it has all the info you need. If the coaches do not provide you with the game sheet, then you provide them with the one that you already have with you. In the game sheet I have prepared for you, you will be able to fit both teams. In some cases, the ref may choose to leave the game sheet with the coach to fill out during the game or at half time. Well, whatever you are comfortable with. The bottom line is that to protect yourself and to be more efficient you should ask the coach for the game sheet (coaches like to call it “team list” but it is the same thing). This is important especially for the full field games. As for the mini soccer games, you may be more flexible. If the coaches do not provide you with the game sheet or claim that they don’t have the time to fill out your game sheet, you will have to go back to the old way of doing it: write the names of the scorers after each goal is scored, or write the numbers down, and at the end of the game, ask the coach for the names of those players, as well as the MVP.

-         After the game make sure that you report all the info to the statistician (names only, not numbers). The full details are provided in my referee’s corner and also in the statistician’s voice mail. Please remember NOT to report the scores to me since I am not the one that looks after them.

-         Yellow cards, red cards and special incident reports must be sent to Christine Orton of ECOSA and to her only. These forms and details are provided on our website, as well.

-         In the schedule the team that is first on the left hand side of the screen is the home team, which means that the other team on the right hand site is the away team. In case that you are wondering why is this important: Well, for three reasons:1.The home team should provide the game ball and only if they fail to provide a good ball then the ref may ask the away team to provide the game ball 2. When tossing the coin, it is usually the home team that calls it first, unless, in sign of sportsmanship, the opposition or the ref asks the away team to call it heads or tail.3. In case of both teams wearing the same or similar jerseys when asked by the ref to change jerseys ( or wear something else on top to distinguish from each other) is the home team that should change and only if they can’t out of courtesy the away team might see what they can do about it.

PENALTIES

-    If you send your availability after the deadline of Friday 9:30pm there are no guaranties that your services will be required, unless the head ref is really short for refs and will not have anyone else to cover certain games.

-   If you send your confirmation after 9:30pm on Sunday, your confirmation will not count. As a result of it, not only will you lose your game/s for that week, but on top of that you will not get any new assignment for the following week. So, please if you fail to confirm your game on time, don't bother to email me on the following week because you are not going to get any games, at all. This obviously will be on top of the fact that you are losing your games for the week you failed to confirm on time. If you fail to confirm at all, you will not receive any games in the future till I receive an explanation. Whenever possible I will use my own discretion based on the circumstances of each case.

-   If you have asked for an extension of the confirmation deadline, but then when you come late and inform me that unfortunately you no longer can do the game assigned to you, you will not be taken into consideration on the following week. The reason why is because you are failing to honour your commitment and also since you are confirming late, you are putting the head ref in a very tight position by having very limited time to find a replacement. 

-   If you send your scores late to the statistician, beside the existing penalty of $5 deduction from your game fee you will also not be considered for games on the following week. So please if you report your scores late and you would know because the statistician will let you know, please don't bother to email me with your availability on the following week because your email will not be taken into consideration and you will not get any games for that week.

-  If you haven't refereed for our club at all till the end of June, without providing a satisfactory reason, your name will be removed from the list of refs for our club for this year and also for the next year and also you no longer will receive any emails with updates from our club since you are not working for us. We do understand if you are busy doing other things and we also appreciate your reasoning, but also we expect you to understand that we can not keep contacts that take time away from people who are working for our club.

                                                                                                  REMINDERS

- Please make sure that you keep my email address as a separate email not as a bulk with all other emails of your friends, or otherwise you might have problems when your friends ( that you have in the same bulk of emails as mine) start sending out spam emails or adverstising emails in which case you have no control over it but on the other hand you will have to realize that the club will remove your email address from contacts, unless you are going to offer a new email contact or unless you will be able to control the one you have and make sure that there are no comercial emails or spam originating from your email.
- If you are heading out of town and you need an extension of the confirmation deadline just ask for it and I will be more than happy to give it to you as I have always done. Please remember that you have clearly and precisely to ask for the extension. Just telling me that you have a tournament during the weekend or that you will go at your cottage doesn't cut it. You MUST precisely ask for the extension and as I said I always give it.
- If you are not in town on Friday and need to send your availability a little earlier, such as Thursday for example you can do so, as long as you provide a reason as to why you need it earlier. If you fail to provide the reason your email will not be taken into consideration.

                          Yours in soccer,

                             Fevri Pazari

                 Club Head Refere for PYSC