My own personal feeling about this is of worry that turning to referees will completely change the ethos of the sport, for the worse. Spirit-of-the-game, and self-refereeing is obviously the core of what makes ultimate a unique (and pretty special) sport. For those who say give it MLU go and see what happens, unfortunately, it’s pretty clear what will happen. It’s human nature to adapt to your situation, and ultimate players will learn to play in a certain way if the sport is refereed. Gradually the respect and spirit for fair play will evaporate, and you’ll see ultimate players acting as in other team sports, playing to the letter of the law, pushing the boundaries of the rules, diving/play acting to get foul calls, seeing what they can get away with etc. etc. … and of course you’ll get players and coaches moaning about referees’ decisions if they lose. For the person who used the comparison with cricket - ‘An honest batsman will walk before the finger's gone up’, anyone who follows cricket knows that element of sportsmanship has pretty much completely died out.
I think my own philosophy with this issue is partly linked with work done with ultimate development in schools. More and more schools are playing ultimate now, in part because it’s a quick fun game (as are a lot of sports) but the major selling point is the spirit-of-the-game principle. Instead of teachers having to referee games, and have pupils moaning constantly about decisions, teachers buy into this idea where they have a mechanism to teach a sport with fair play, good spirit, and a method to deal with conflict while playing the sport. I’m not sure quite how popular ultimate could become, but it has huge potential because of this element. If you take away these underpinning principles, you take away the uniqueness of Ultimate, and also the main aspect that is attracting it into schools. However, reading between the lines, there is another argument - it appears that people in support of the MLU idea are those who play at the higher end of ultimate in the UK. I don’t play the top end of A-tour or for GB myself, so I don’t fully appreciate this issue, but maybe there is a feeling that some sort of officiating is needed at the higher/international level. Maybe this is a debate that is needed, especially amongst those who play at this more elite level. I would hope though that even at the top level, players want to preserve the Spirit-of-the-game ethos. If this is an issue, maybe a compromise needs to be made. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with ‘observers’ being used (as detailed earlier by Steve) at the highest level in the UK and at international competitions. However, for reasons above, I would be completely against having the game fully refereed. My instinct is the guys behind MLU want to improve the sport at an elite level. However, if, as they say, the people running MLU are indeed ‘strongly in favour of spirit of the game in Ultimate’ I think they need to be very aware of the long-term ‘consequences’ to the sport as a whole if they have it fully officiated. Matt -- This e-mail and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please advise the sender as soon as practicable and delete the e-mail from your system. The University of Chichester is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales. Registration number 4740553. The registered office is College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6PE. __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
