Yes, the two man system is the worst situation, right? Wrong, it is the middle of the road. I have seen a couple of games, and coached in one, where we had one referee and students or assistant coaches running the lines.
What bothers me more than this is that it seems that there are a lot of people who post who think the referee does no wrong and no matter what they call or don't call, it is automatically the right call and there is no room for discussion. It also seems that the people who think that the referee does no worng, are the referees who post. I enjoy referee input and we need to include referees and their opinions in disussions but face it and be honest, referees make mistakes and sometimes their continuous mistakes do sway the momentum or style of the game significantly to one team, and they suffer no consequences. If a coach or a player makes a bad decision, they could lose the game or give up a goal. If a coach makes too many mistakes, he is replaced or fired (depending on the level). If a player makes too many mistakes, he is benched or cut. What happenes to a referee who makes too many mistakes? Essentially nothing. To my knowledge, he is never shown a video tape and told, "this should have been a foul" or "this should have been advantage", etc that would help that referee or linesman improve. If I am not mistaken, there is some type of basic evaluation system in place by an independent person (or maybe that is club) and we have been status quo for many years now. We are not suggesting evaluations to run off every ref, which is what the majority of referees feel we want to do and we do not expect them to be Premiership referees. But we do expect them to enforce rules as they are stated, protect players (do not be afraid to use cards or send players off) and take constructive criticism when it is given in an arena like this. We are after evaluations to improve poor officials by identifying them and then giving them extra help and rewarding the best officials by identifying them and giving them playoff and championship games. This referee eval list would be kept confidential so that coaches would not have access to it. This would prevent players or coaches from telling the team "ok, this is the best/worst ref in the state".
Also, why not use the evaluation system to award a "Referee of the Year"? We have a "Coach of the Year" for each division and numerous ways for players to be recognized so why not recognize and reward the best referees with a plaque or something?!?! Announce it at North/South weekend or the Top 50/30 Banquet or something like that.
