No one can deny that refereeing, as many other things in life, rotates around teamwork.

A referee should be able to correlate positively and ‘click’ easily with other colleagues. One should avoid instances where there is lack of trust or, worse still , hatred between colleagues as the future can be nothing but tough, if not practically impossible.

From my experience I have met many retired (or about to retire) referees who openly state that the thing they miss the most is the fraternity and so-called camaraderie with other fellow referees and colleagues.

I guess many other fellow referees will agree with me if I say that as a result of joining the refereeing community, one finds that most of the fellow referees will become some of the best friends and some may also remain so for a good number of years, if not for life.

According to observations by competent people abroad, results have generally shown that if a referee is not a likeable person, arrogant, snobbish and a with a sort of attitude that eh knows everything, it is quite difficult that he will have the maximum success in refereeing.

I may put more relevance to this statement by reminding people that refereeing is quite a humbling experience where one could make mistakes.

As I have already stated many times in past articles, if a referee has a hard time to accept constructive criticism, it is better that he might not even have thought about becoming a referee in the first place.

Yet again, however, I have to emphasize the term constructive criticism. Unfortunately, even in Malta, one sees and hears a number of media programmes and articles which are nothing but destructive in their criticism toward the referees due possibly also to some hidden agenda or in the search to create (or better still, to market) a controversy which could lead to a greater audience.

Fellow referees abroad

Two local FINA international waterpolo referees will be in action abroad thereby increasing their experience in this fast emerging game.

Veteran Mario Dalli has been appointed to be amongst the referees in the FINA World Women’s League in Gubbio, Italy.

This tournament, the second one in history, will be played between July 6 and 11 and six national teams will take part in this Group B namely France, Russia, Hungary, Holland, Spain and hosts Italy.

Overall twelve teams are taking part in this tournament, divided into two groups where Group A (Greece, USA, Australia, Canada, Germany and Brazil) is being played in New York. The top four teams from each group qualify for the World league Super Final Tournament which is to be played in Kirishi, Russia between the 18th and 22nd of August.

Massimo Angileri, on the other hand, will be in Bratislava, Slovakia, between July 14th and 17th to officiate matches in the Low Tatras Cup for youths born 1987 or younger.

Eight national teams will play in this tournament to be played in Kosice – United States, Australia, Japan, Slovakia, Hungary, France, Slovenia and Italy.

Angileri will be among the eight referees nominated for this tournament to be played under the control of two delegates, Mr Perisic (Serbia and Montenegro) and Mr. Demey (France).

Yours truly will also be abroad in order to officiate in the 5th edition of the FIBA European Junior Women Promotion Championships to be held in Aberdeen between Monday 11th July and Saturday 16th July.

Scotland will be hosts to Albania, Monaco, Luxembourg, Andorra, Austria, Gibraltar and Wales in these championships where the top two teams will earn a right to participate in the continental championships.

A sincere good luck also goes to fellow local football referees who are presently in the middle of their yearly seminar where the main lecturer is the Mr. Lopez Fernandez from Spain, a member of the UEFA Referees’ Committee.

The main aim in this seminar (which has been organized annually in the past years by the Malta Football Referees Association) is to discuss the recent amendments made in the football rules.

Such seminars, in my opinion and from my personal experience of such seminars internationally, are highly beneficial for all the refereeing family as they could lead to more understanding and, more importantly, greater consistency in judgment by the majority of the referees.

And whilst I am speaking of local football, I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the MFRA for handing two honours within its ranks for the past season.

Well done to Mariano Debono who won the Most Promising Referee award for last season. Debono, who is 30 years old, started refereeing in 2000 and today forms part of the second class category.

He also made his debut as assistant referee in the Premier League last year.

Congratulations also go to Mitchell Scerri who won the Trainee Referee Award for season 2004/2005.

Twenty-three year old Scerri commenced refereeing two years ago and last season worked as an assistant referee in the Third Division.

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