What is the point of a Referee in the Match?

First, the referee will be informed about cards through the umpire's scoresheet. After the match the umpire hands in his written scoresheet, or collects the electronic one from machtcontol and adds an incident report. Then the scoresheet is handed to the referee. When necessary the referee will ask the umpire to give a further explanation about the incident. All these incidents are then included into the referee's report. There are also cases in which, as a matter of Law, the referee has to be informed immediately when a (red) card is given. It therefore never happens that cards will be issued without the referee being informed about it, either at once or after the match.

It is actaully quite interesting that you mention t*nnis. In badminton we used to have a similar way of on court handling of these matters, however
without the disciplinary system behind it to follow up on these cards. The latter is now gradually being developed as you know.
The cards were originally introduced to make it more clear to players and/or (TV) audience what was actually going on. Neither the term "card" nor it's colour is or has ever been part of Badminton Law. It is only a display policy for given formal warnings and misconduct faults which has been laid down in the BWF's recommendations to technical officials for the excecution of Law related procedures. Not using cards would formally not take anything away from a given misconduct warning or misconduct fault, it only would not be in line with these handling instructions.
The whole procedure with cards was introduced to avoid players or coaches not speaking/underatanding any english claiming not to have been informed effectively about the nature of the umpire's intervention (warning or fault) in cases of misconduct.
In t*nnis this problem is a non-item. I know however that in badminton this is still not the case. There are world-class palyers whose understanding of english does not go beyond the umpire's "play". The rest they read from the scoring system or from the other officials' signals. Returnig to an excecution procedure without non-linguistic indicators defining the difference between warning (yellow) and fault (red) at this time is not realy an option. I am however certainly inclined to support renewed research into finding other solutions for communicating the umpire's discision with regard to these particular offences.

I absolutely agree with your point on the BWF's responsibillity concerning the position of the referee. Refereeing does involve a lot more than just knowing all the rules. Basically knowing the rules is of secondairy importance. Proper refereeing means applying the rules in a manner related to the spirit within which that event is played. I feel that in most cases common sense should be a referee's main guide and not all referees seem to understand that. It is certainly the BWF's responsibillity to provide adequate brush up workshops for top level officials. I would also agree that BWF could makke a policy discision to pay extra attention to a certain type of offence with the purpose to improve the pesentation of the game in genetral. A firm stand against causing unwarrented delay in play could certainly be one of those policy discions to be made.

 

I guess the language thing in relation to English being the common language is a similar situation to Airline pilots. Their common language is English.

The card issue was brought in as a start towards improving standards on court during games and this has now been extended to fining players. As regards the actions of coaches and whether or not they should be fined for their actions well that is a matter for BWF and I certainly do not have any influence at that level.

If you watched LYB over the weekend he certainly pushed the barriers. He and the player tried to influence the Line Judge who the TV replay showed may have make a mistake. I know the line judge concerned very well and have worked with her extensively and certainly she ould not be influenced by his actions. Should he be dealt with by BWF well thats up to the Refereee who should have included it in his report.

The issue of changing shuttles and supposed confusion and arguments is all down to gamesmanship believe me. If the two sides argue about it then the Umpire will make the decision as to whether it should be changed. If there is no Umpire well thats tough. Get more Umpires involved in events.

As regards BWF well every Country is represented at BWF AGM and many Countries are represented at BWF Council which is where major decisions are made. Visit the BWF web site and look at the make up of Council. Lobby them about changes you want made or issues you want adressed.

The only problem I see is that basically we have a game which is well supported across the World and does not have the discipline issues that many other sports do i.e. football.

Do we as players, coachs, officials, spectators wish to see the game degenerate to the levels whereby players deliberately play up to see ther opponents get carded etc. I remember when cards first came into play in badminton seeing a player ring someones mobile phone who was on court playing jst so that it rang alongside the court thus drawing a card from the umpire. Yes the phone should have been switched off but wasn't this a bit juvenile?

As I said in a much earlier part of this thread the matters on court are merely part of what the referee does at a tournament and that is why they have an umpire to take charge of the court and deal with most matters.

 

What we have not yet brought up in so many words but have actually been talking about is the philosophy behind the structure of Rules, Laws and Regulations which has been governing the Law-making process within the BWF. For decades it has been the position of BWF that each type of event, each field of the making of rules relating to competition play should have its own system of rules en regulations.
This policy of course also affected the development of Badminton Law.
Although things are now changing rapidly, Badminton does still not have a body of rules in which all existing rules, laws and regulations and guidelines are fully integrated into one comprehensive system with a workable structure containing all necessary crossreferences.
The main consequence for Badminton Law is that the Laws have always been regarded separate entity, for which reason there are still only very few references to Badminton Law to be found in other regulations.
Badminton Law has always been interpreted as not reaching beyond the match in which it is being applied. Hence the absence of a formal system to follow up on cards or related matters. I do wish to stress however that the development of such a system is currently being researched, indicating that James’ concern is now being shared by the Law making body of BWF. I think we should give them time to sort this matter.

For the time being I remain inclined to disagree that cards are meaningless. A warning, communicated by a yellow card indicates to a player audience and media that a certain boundary has been overstepped and that this shall not be tolerated again. A further infringement of such nature will lead to a fault communicated by a red card and when even that does not help, disqualification ill follow. Within the context of a match therefore, cards are certainly not meaningless. The only thing that is missing is the incentive for a structural change of a player’s pattern of behaviour and that is precisely what the formal follow up which is now being developed should achieve.

BWF is also researching methods to control the coaches’ behaviour by making the players accountable for their coach’s actions. Rather than the umpire taking action against the coach, the action shall be taken against the player where at the same time the referee will deal with the coach in any way he sees fit which may involve the coach being refused presence on the arena floor for either the duration of that particular match, the reminder of that particular tournament day or the remainder of the event. So also this aspect is being dealt with at the moment.

I would certainly not encourage a decree for any player’s level of understanding of any language. That is not what they play badminton for. There are many other ways to encourage players to improve their communication skills in English.
Because of the many international junior events that we have had in Europe over the years the problem has now completely disappeared. Young players meet each other at a very young age, make friends and start communicating outside the tournament circuit through internet. All this communication is of course in English and this does improve their skills.. Probably something similar happens on other continents. Furthermore I am quite sure that most national BA’s realize the importance of media attention and are doing the necessary to make their players aware of this. I do trust that when we give it time, in the end it will remain only a very small problem. However this used to be completely different at the time the cards were introduced. Yet again, the mean reason for introducing the cards was for communication to parties outside the court.

I am not so sure that the whole shuttle thing is actually an item. Common practice at the moment is that the player who wants to change the shuttle holds the shuttle up, seeks eye contact with the opponent and the opponent nods, the player seeks eye contact with the umpire who then refers the player by hand signal to the service judge. There is no discussion at all. When the opponent does not want to change he again nods and the umpire will order to continue play or after having checked the shuttle order it to be changed. Any attempted to change the shuttle for strictly tactical reasons is not to difficult to detect and can easily be dealt with under misconduct rules. Of course we can only talk about situations which are controlled by an umpire. No one has any control over what happens when there is no umpire.

My influence on changing Badminton Law or any of the other BWF rules or regulations is rather indirect. As a member of the Rules and Laws committee of my BA, my colleagues in that committee and I advise our BA how to deal with BWF proposals and we also communicate with BWF directly on these matters. We can however not insist that our views are incorporated in any final draft for any change of BWF rules. The composition of such a draft is the prerogative of the BWF Committee for Rules and Laws and in all cases BWF AGM has the final word.