Ian Stokes, League of Ireland Referee Manager: “We see RefPal as an important addition in our plans to improve the development of our elite match officials. The RefPal analysis is prepared by refereeing experts which is an added advantage and the depth of clips and statistics will provide a great resource for our developing officials.”
On Sunday Kristo introduced the results of a short study on penalty area incidents based on the data from 4 leagues and last two seasons. Key takeaways were that the most difficult topics are different handball related incidents and holding offences during dead ball situations. The group discussed together what conditions need to be in place for the referees to have a realistic chance of a correct call and what should be expectations for decision accuracy with close to perfect accuracy being an impossibility. This also led to discussions about mistakes and how to use those as a platform for learning.
It is a great pleasure to start working with such an enthusiastic group of referees led by example by their FIFA panel referees Rob Harvey, Rob Hennessy, Neil Doyle, Paul McLaughlin and Claire Purcell. Special mention and congratulations go to Michelle O'Neill who will represent Ireland in the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zeeland in 2023 who also helped to analyse the role of assistant referees in supporting the penalty area decision making of the referee team.
