Manage a panel of referees

1

Write the panel down

On the tournament page, under Referee panel, add everybody who is refereeing. A name, and either their account or just their email address.

An address is enough, and that is the point: in June somebody has said yes and has not joined the site. Add them anyway. The entry stands on its own and links itself to their account the moment they join with that address, so you never go back and edit it.

Each row then says where they stand:

Has an account, so they can be given a game.
Waiting to join, so they are on the panel and everybody can see them, but a game cannot be given to them yet. A game goes to a person, not to a name on a sheet.

This is the list the referee screen reads

Before there was a panel, the picker on a referee's phone could only offer people who already had a game, which on the first morning is nobody. Fill this in and the picker is populated before a single game is given out.

2

Chase the accounts

Anybody still showing waiting to join needs an account before they can be handed a game. Send them the join link and ask them to use the address you typed. Nothing else is needed from you; the link happens on its own.

It is the only step that depends on somebody else, so it is the one to do early. Everything below is yours alone and can be changed on the morning.

3

Approve their phones

The referee screen is not opened with a password. It is opened on an approved phone, because a password travels and a phone does not: it is handed to a volunteer at the gate, used for a season, and never typed.

Ask them to open the referee screen on their own phone. It shows a short code and waits. Find that code under Staff Devices, tick Referee, and their screen opens by itself.

On the same device there is Tournaments this phone is for. Leave it empty and the phone sees every tournament, which is how it has always worked. Name tournaments and it sees only those, which is what you want when six handsets go out at a festival and none of them should be showing next month's. A weekly night is not a tournament and keeps working either way.

A new phone is a new device

Approval is per phone, not per person. Somebody who changes handset, or opens it in a different browser, needs ticking again. Thirty seconds, but not thirty seconds you want to discover at five to nine.

4

Name a head referee

Under Head referee, put their email address and save. They then see this tournament's whole card rather than only the games you gave them, and can run any game in it. That is what you want on a morning where somebody is late and a game has to start without its referee.

Leave it empty and it is you. Naming somebody adds them; it never takes you off. The person with the clipboard is the one who ends up entering the result of the game nobody reported, and an appointment you made yourself should not lock you out of that.

5

Set how long a game is

Halves and Minutes each half, on the same page. This is playing time, not the slot, and it carries through to the clock on the referee's screen so nobody has to set it themselves on the morning.

A grade can override both, which is the ordinary case: the over seventies play shorter halves than the over fifties. Leave a grade at zero and it uses the tournament's. Leave the tournament at zero and the referee's screen keeps its own two halves of forty-five.

6

Give out the games

Open Games and referees. Every game has a picker of your panel, and a box for an email address if you are adding somebody on the spot.

One referee to a game. Assistants and timekeepers are separate and are left alone when you change who has the whistle.

The heading of that section counts for you: how many games, and how many have no referee. Getting that second number to nothing is the whole job. Worth checking again the night before, because a grade added late arrives with nobody on it.

7

On the day: who has actually turned up

Each referee opens their game and presses I am here. Only the person who has the game can press it: somebody else saying a referee is ready is a report rather than a check-in, and the whole point is that you find out when it is not true.

Five minutes before kick-off, any game whose referee has not checked in raises an alert on your screen and on the head referee's. It says which of the two problems it is: nobody has the game at all, or the person who has it has not said they are here. It stays up past kick-off, because a game nobody turned up to does not stop being a problem when the clock passes it.

The referee screen listing the day's games — Their games, or the whole card for whoever covers the tournament.

It all works with no signal. Everything is written on the phone first and sent when there is a bar of reception.

8

Moving a game when somebody does not appear

Open the game on your own phone and use Change on the referee row. The picker offers your panel, and anybody already on a game at the same time is greyed out and says so: "on another game at 9:30". They are shown rather than hidden, because knowing the person you were about to ask is on pitch two is the useful half of the answer.

The new referee has it immediately. There is nothing to resend and no link to reissue. The row disappears once the game kicks off, because by then the screen is for the clock.

If the replacement has never refereed here, they need steps 1 to 3 first, which is the argument for approving one or two more phones than you think you need.