Polo Rules

I thought about an idea last night and i had spoken a bit with clement, manu and other from GVP yesterday, would like to have some opinion about it before (maybe) enforcing it for the WHBPC.

Considering to give more power to the goal ref, let's call them assistant ref.

The idea is to create a trio of ref (main ref, ref assistant 1, ref assistant 2) who will be in charge of a (to be determined) shift, let's say 2-3 hours.

This "squad" will work together and manage their role as their convenience (main ref role turn or fixed role for the whole time).

Basically the, the ass. ref. have the same power as the main ref. but without whistle, they can call a penalty (one distinct gesture, like one arm up to the sky), a delayed penalty (clear gesture to find, maybe one arm up and one more horizontal) and obviously call goal (flag) and no goal (arm crossed).

The main ref can get a clear view of what's going on without even seeing it, they just have to trust their two other ref.

I don't like that much the "winning team goes goal ref", even if it's a good idea, in practice you can lose time (winning team just goes away...) and im feeling that a real dedicated goal ref is way more effective than an happy-exausted player.

PS. EHBPC 2012 was a mess in term of goal ref, i saw many games where the main ref asking after a few goal "who is the goal ref in this side"?...

Anyway, i think giving more power and more responsibility to the goal ref could help a lot:

• the goal ref (assistant ref) job is way more interesting
  
• the main ref job is more convenient and more effective
  
• basically the whole court is well covered by ref, almost no more dead angle
  
• the call has more power because it comes from 2 or 3 people, not only one ref who take all the responsibility.
  
• in very difficult decision the main ref would call the involved assistant ref to talk with, not the player involved.
  
  

We will put that on paper to see what it's mean.