Manage a panel of referees

1

Get every referee an account

A game is given to a person, not to a name typed on a sheet. That is what lets the club see which games somebody has taken this season, and what puts their game at the top of their own screen on the day.

So each referee needs an account here first. Send them the join link and ask them to use the address you will be typing. If you try to give a game to an address nobody has, the site says so rather than quietly doing nothing: "Nobody here has that address. Ask them to join the site first, then give them the game."

Do this once, well before the day

It is the only step that needs the other person. Everything below is yours alone and takes seconds, so get the accounts done early and the rest can be changed on the morning.

2

Approve their phone

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 will show a short code and wait. Find that code under Staff Devices, tick Referee, and their screen opens by itself. One phone, once, for the season.

A new phone is a new device

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

3

Name a head referee

On the tournament's own page, under Head referee, put their email address and save. They then see this tournament's whole card on the referee screen, not 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.

What their screen will say

"Head referee" if you named them, "Covering the tournament" if they are seeing it because they run the day, and "Head referee, and covering" for somebody who is both across two tournaments at once.

4

Give out the games

Still on the tournament page, open Games and referees. Every game has a picker and, next to it, a box for an email address.

The picker lists the people this tournament already uses: the head referee, and everybody who already has a game in it. The panel builds itself as you go.
The email box is for somebody new. Use it once and they appear in the picker from then on, which matters because it is usually the same six people all weekend.
No referee yet takes a game back off somebody.

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

5

Check nothing is unstaffed

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

6

On the day

Each referee opens the referee screen and sees their own games, with the two teams, the time and the pitch. The head referee and you see the entire card and can open any of them.

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

It works with no signal. Everything is written on the phone first and sent when there is a bar of reception, so a pitch at the far end of the ground is not a problem and nothing waits for a spinner.

If the ground runs on a hooter

Where a tournament starts and stops every pitch together, added time is taken off the referee's screen on purpose. A referee adding two minutes for an injury would be playing on alone.

7

When somebody drops out

Change the picker on the affected games and the new referee has them immediately; there is nothing to resend and no link to reissue. If the replacement has never refereed here, they need steps 1 and 2 first, which is the argument for approving one or two more phones than you think you need.

In the meantime the head referee can run any game in the tournament, so a pitch is never stuck waiting for an appointment to be typed in.