Getting your referees learning - examples of Ireland and Finland

"Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand."Confucius

There are several aspects to being a great referee, but one of the most important ones is surely the willingness to learn. The habit of constantly seeking improvement. Some have a called it "a passion to improve".
So lets look at two great examples from the RefPal partner countries of how they have done exactly that.

1. How did Ireland do it?
Football Association of Ireland and their referee department headed by Ian Stokes did the following:

• Partnered up with RefPal and had us analyse half of the games in their League of Ireland Premier division
• RefPal created a total of 846 learning clips for Ireland in 2023
• Made the referees aware of all noteworthy incidents from refereeing perspective
• Got their referees evaluating 90% of those incidents with weekly feedback from the referee committee
• 16 referees in the top league gave their opinion on more than 90% of those, totalling more than 12000 evaluations
• Got their referees logging in on average 3 times per every day to RefPal learning platform

In the end of each week, they received official feedback on all clips. The results create RefPal Rating that measures the theoretical know-how of the referees and in turn motivates referees to be engaged. Importantly it also creates objective data on the actual on-field decision accuracy in every major topic in refereeing. 105 referees and observers are in the RefPal Ireland league. In total they gave more than 70000 evaluations for the clips.

Congratulations, Ireland!😍



"Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind" Dale Carnegie

2. How Finland got their referees learning more than just analysing their own games and participating in the occasional seminar?
Football Association of Finland and their refereering department lead by Mattias Gestranius achieved the following remarkable feats:

• 1669 learning clips were created for Finland men’s top league Veikkausliiga
• 87% of them were evaluated by 11 Finnish top league referees
• 300+ referees and observers participated in evaluating and learning from the same clips
• ~150 000 evaluations were given in total
• 55 seminars were created additionally in RefPal
• Grassroots referee education was offered via the RefPal seminar module

In 3 seasons RefPal has created 4960 learning clips from 435 top league games. These clips are all tagged with topic, subtopic and official mark on the evaluation scale creating an enormous comparative database.

Finnish female top league Kansallinen Liiga also co-operates with RefPal and has 2162 incidents from 234 games in 3 seasons.

Kudos, Finland! 😍



We are delighted and flattered by the work and dedication shown by the referees and referee departments of Ireland and Finland, but also that of our other wonderful partners who are doing no less of a great job. Thank You to Azerbajan, Kuwait, Faroe Islands, Latvia, Estonia and San Marino who worked with RefPal in a similar capacity.

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