Don Morrison also came down from Worcester to coach/evaluate my refereeing, which turned out to be extremely valuable.
For this game I set about to work on my scrum infringement recognition, my positioning, and my control of the breakdown with respect to players keeping their feet.
From Don, I will steal the match report:
The halves were 30 minutes in duration. The game started out with Harvard demonstrating better skills than UConn. More specifically, early in the game UConn really struggled in their first-time venture (practice or otherwise) to the great outdoors of late winter in New England. As the game progressed, UConn began to get rhythm. They established dominance in forward play, especially at rucks, and thus they provided their backs with ample opportunity to attack. However, the transition from forwards to back (i.e. scrumhalf) was severely deficient. Equally important, or perhaps even more so, was the deficiency of UConn’s kicker for goals and for touch. Suffice to say, UConn lacked a couple of skilled positions or they would have easily dominated this game once they got the cobwebs out of their winter hiatus. Harvard was very good at capitalizing on their moments, and their kicker for conversion attempts was brilliant. Harvard deservedly won this closely contested game.
It should be added, UCONN scored their last try on full time to make the score 20-21, they missed the conversion....very close game.
Now, to hit on my goals for the day, there is a lot of discuss, but I want to hit the major stuff:
- Positioning - by and large I improved in this department as the game progressed, as indicated by my eval. Don mentioned at half time that the players were fringing, from my saddle position I had assumed these were marginal, and was communicating to the players to take a step, but since I was in the saddle position, I could not get convince them to take a step back. In the 45 degree position, however, the players would respond immediately (smart players....it is harvard after all).
- Scrummage Infringements - unfortunately the teams did not provide me much of a challenge.
- Breakdown management - per Don's eval, I managed this pretty well. There were a few infringements where I called hands in the ruck where it should have been side entry / killing to the other team. Just need more games to develop my imagery.
I also have the eval for my records, which presents every aspect of the in great detail.
B Side game:
I first went over the scrum engagement again, just to check, since many of the players were new to the scrum. It proved important as one player had a real tendency to have his head below his hips and not bind properly. I corrected him there, but I had to give him a bit more attention during the game, fortunately no penalties. My initial shock in refereeing this period was the serious difference in game knowledge between these newbies and the A side. Essentially every player was coming to the ruck and losing their feet immediately, coming in the side, and well in front of the last foot. I tried my best to communicate the infringements – but I think the players were simply ignorant to their sins. I would penalize if it had a real material effect – such as a turnover or offsides, but I tried to keep the game going as best I could. About 7 minutes in I had a chat with the captains to reiterate my points, gave them a list of 3 things to tell their teams “Last foot, Keep your feet, come in through the gate – I want to keep the game going but we have got to keep it safe” This approach seemed to have effect for a few minutes, but after that they resorted to their original habits.
