International Referee Appointments
WARNING - The availability list for international referees sent out by the GBWBA Office must be completed and returned to the GBWBA Office only.
The Association has been subject to an embarrassing situation where a referee marked himself "unavailable" for one of the IWBF competitions on the form returned to the GBWBA Office and "available" for the same competition on a form he sent directly to the IWBF Europe Office.
In future, any referee returning his availability form directly to IWBF Europe will be removed from the list of GBWBA International Referees.
If IWBF Europe ask you for your availability directly, please tell them that you have sent this information to the GBWBA Office and that they should obtain the information from there.
There seems to be some confusion relating to the facts circulated by certain GB International referees regarding the procedure for appointments for international competition. At present Great Britain has nine (9) IWBF registered referees. The GBWBA is responsible for selecting referees to accompany British club teams taking part in the Preliminary Rounds of the IWBF Europe club events, the Champions Cup, the André Vergauwen Cup and the Willi Brinkmann Cup. Most seasons this results in the GBWBA only being able to nominate just 4 referees for these competitions each year.
All other competitions, the Finals of the three IWBF Europe club competitions, the European Championships for Men, Women and Juniors and the Gold Cup (World Championships) and Paralympic Games, referees are selected directly by either IWBF Europe or IWBF World. To try and maintain a fair system for the selection of the referees for the three events the GBWBA is able to nominate referees, an international referee rotation schedule has been maintained by the Association since 1999. Any referees who are appointed directly by IWBF World or IWBF Europe for events are rotated to the bottom of this schedule, to ensure that those referees who do/did not receive appointments from the IWBF have an opportunity to referee in the Preliminary Rounds.
During the course of a season, the GB Men's, Women's and Junior teams sometimes (vary rarely in the case of the latter two teams!) host competitions in the UK. When this is the case, the selection process for the GB referees attending the event is determined by a number of factors.
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The funds available to cover transport/accommodation of officials.
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Whether the tournament is suitable to allow the development of potential future international referees, allowing them to obtain experience.
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Whether the tournament timing may present an opportunity for officials selected for an IWBF major championship to practice prior to the event (very relevant as the majority of major tournaments take place out of season and in a period referees are no longer active).
Contrary to the comments made by ill-informed officials, the rotation schedule is maintained by the GBWBA Office and selections made directly from this list. None of the members of the Technical & Classification Sub-committee decide which referees are selected for the events the GBWBA is able to nominate officials.
Steve Spilka
Chairman Technical & Classification Sub-committee