Recently in my beautiful country (Poland) many dramatic crime cases took place, which appeared on the front-page news and held there for months. However I will not be writing here about these touching events and their unusual recent frequency.

When I was listening to the news about the detonation of the suspects, decisions of the judges adjudicating temporary arrest or its rescission, one thing drew my attention. How much time do judges, prosecutors, lawyers and judicial experts have to make a decision? It’s not hours, days or even months but usually months or years.

It referees as well very important decisions but also cases regarding a theft of an old bikes from a garden. I compared it with the work of referees in sport. They have so little time to make a decision, which is also important and has its consequences. Of course, it’s different when you are refereeing a match of backyard teams playing football to small goals and different when you have to dictate the spot kick in a match deciding of the Olympic medal. It is even different and more dramatic, when you have to decide of the continuation or interruption of the boxing fights or in the other full contact combat sport. Such decisions cause consequences even for the player’s life. Also decisions made in Armwrestling may influence competitors’ lives.

How much time does it take? A few seconds? Or maybe just a split second? That’s right!

But refereeing in our sport we also deal with protests, which must be solved in a flash at most of the events. A few referees must simply decide if the fight should be repeated, if the foul should be recognized, if the question verdict should be changed or kept.

Again it’s a matter of minutes, and a place of work is not a soundproof courtroom, but a hall full of screaming fans. You have to work under pressure and not to yield on hosts request. After all you have to be able to look in the eyes of the competitor who feels aggrieved, sometimes hear a few “nice” sentences or explain what he did against the rules and why his decision was as it was. I repeatedly saw the referees to have almost a ‘seminar’ at the side table, to make a competitor pay attention to his mistakes. I also saw fevered heads and ‘wide’ gestures which made by heavy class competitors could be even dangerous.

I had as a referee myself, after a gala of the Mixed Martial Arts explain my decisions to a group of fans of the sportsman who lost. How much time did I have to prepare the ‘justification’ of the verdict? Do we have it as much as a judge in a town court in a case about deception of the still of the night, so one month, two ore even three ones? No, we don’t! We have just few minutes to justify the decision we’ve made in a split second.

Dear readers! Maybe in your countries you can also notice similar phenomenon of long-lasting judicial procedures and you also have an obvious connotation: “How is that possible? I have to judge a situation in a few seconds, I announce the result and I’m ready to justify it, and ‘they’ are wondering for two months if a  bike stolen from a garden was parked properly or not.

It’s not a column of necessary changes in the executive law  (and not only) in some countries. Writing was I wrote above I just wanted to tell all of the sports referees that they are real Champions in what they do. I wanted to express my respect and mobilize players and trainers to appreciate our referees. Please also notice high horses do the judges of the courts ride, and how normal are our friends wearing white and black stripped T-shirts.

And that’s not all! As most of the do not referee in their native language!

That’s still not the end of the differences! A judge – a lawyer may be losing proficiency as the years go by, he can forget, get lost, and no one would do anything to him. And a sports referee must always be in a perfect mental and physical shape.

I have an idea, which rather cannot be introduced in my country. But… what do we have the International Armwrestling Society for? I heard that in Russia many Armwrestlers occupy high places among authorities, they are members of parliament, or are on duties in ministries. Maybe it should be tired to introduce an obligation to do work experience as a sports referee for law students. Maybe it will contribute to improve the Themis Servants.

Let me know what you think of that. Write how it is in your countries and if you have similar associations to the work of judges and sports referees. Best Regards!

On photo: David, Oleksandr, Wenera, Ahmed, Christo, Viktor - best referees in NEMIROFF WORLD CUP with Neil and Igor.

PeSzy