ABSTRACT
As noted by the Football Federation of Australia:
There have been many referees who made good decisions but did not have the confidence of the players. Likewise there have been referees, who comparatively speaking made a large number of errors, but were considered by players to be good referees.
(Football Federation Australia, 2012, p. 8) Studies of sports officiating suggest that skilled communication is as important as most officials believe it is, and that it may be most important when it is most difficult (Mascarenhas, Collins, and Mortimer, 2005). Furthermore, organizational research indicates that managers often “make bad times worse” for staff by distancing themselves when they should be explaining and showing respect (Patient and Skarlicki, 2010, p. 556). Sport officiating investigations have focused on the elite levels of competition, with experienced officials who tend to be highly skilled communicators. But most officiating is done at the grassroots level, where only a rope might separate the official from an angry crowd (Simmons, 2006). Officials at all levels of competition make rapid calls on incidents that are frequently ambiguous, in environments renowned for heightened emotions. In grassroots sport there is no replay technology to prove calls right or wrong, and much depends on officials’ ability to align their interpretations with the rules, and otherwise persuade compliance and cooperation from those who wish the decisions were different.