Refereeing in Nantes
Nantes has grown to be one of my favourite tournaments in the schedule. Its great seeing new players that I haven’t seen before and seeing some of my favourite developing players in amazing battles against others. However, in this tournament, I suddenly realised that somebody apart from the players has become almost more important in deciding the outcome of any match than before. That is the referee. This hasn’t been a sudden thing, looking back on last year it seems to have developed over the course of last season especially after update 8. Update 8 was the update which gave more emphasis on making players go through collisions to get to the ball amongst other things, and when I first saw it occur I was all in favour of it. However, in Nantes this year I’ve found myself noticing that this update has been taken way too far in some areas and not explained well enough to players or the public. I noticed in the final between Declan James and James Willstrop the referee was ge...