Hi Carol et al - I must respectfully disagree with you on the topic of Referee feedback forms!!!

We've been talking at Worlds rules meetings and referees meetings about using some sort of feedback/rating system to getting information on referee performance from the teams since at least 2002!!! The feedback forms used in Sheffield were presented by Woody, Murray, Rob Feist and Pizazz to all the Refs at the referees meeting at Sheffield before the competition started, and we definitely discussed them there - in fact from memory we made several changes to the proposed forms!! It definitely was NOT something that came from nowhere, as you suggest.

Agreed, the focus was certainly on water refs rather than deck refs (and Liam's suggestion on covering ALL refs is a good one), but I don't think that the ongoing 'feedback' from the forms was a secret. I know of several Refs who sighted forms that had comments on their refereeing, and worked on improving areas that were highlighted as 'deficiencies' by teams.

From memory, the refs used for finals were chosen to some degree from the information received on these, and although I know that it took Woody a long time to collate alll the results he received, I don't think that they were secret!

I personally thought the process was a very good one, both from the perspective of getting feedback on MY refereeing, and as a Masters player - being able to provide feedback on others (because I'm very shy, and unwilling to give it otherwise! :-) ).

I hope we use them in South Africa.

Cheers,

Simon