Adventures in Aussie Touch Footie Part 3 - NSW Junior State Cup

Monday 9th February

"Welcome to the Junior State Cup 2009. This tournament is undoubtedly the biggest Touch event in the history of the sport and it keeps on increasing in numbers each year. This year there are 303 teams, which is the most we have had nominate. To support this we have 301 referees. This now entrenches the event as the largest in the world."

This is how the intro' letter of the referee's information pack begins. I was told by quite of the local Touchies at the State Cup back in December that if I thought that was big/impressive/etc., to "wait until I saw Junior State" which would be "50% bigger again" and not just with participants - thousands of kids between 10 and 18 years old - but this time with lots of *parents* around the place too. Apparently a lot of them are voraciously supportive of their kids (read: competitive!) with referees in particular copping a lot of verbal from the sidelines, seemingly irrespective of the decisions they make. Over half the 300+ referees' team are juniors themselves so should spectators turn out as rumoured, I hope they remember that without referees there would be no games and these kids are trying to learn as they go and deserve a lot of credit for stepping to this environment to gain experience.

In an unexpected twist, I just realised I've been appointed as a team leader... interesting.

Weekend 14th/15th February

What is it about this sport and early starts?! Up at 6:15am Saturday to be at the fields by 7:00am (after hopefully catching a lift) in time for a 7:15 team leader's meeting. Other referees didn't get much longer in bed though, as they needed to be present for an all-referee's meeting at 7:30am. The first timeslot started at 8:00am.

Referee appointments are done, in my opinion, in a very smart way here. First referees are allocated to a team and then those teams are allocated to a group. Group A is appointed to the first timeslot, group B to the second and so on until each group is allocated, then it's back to group A and the sequence is done again. This means referees generally have one game on followed by two off. Sometimes a team will not be appointed in a group's timeslot - they're effectively on standby making it easier for team leaders to find replacements should somebody in their team pull out of a game, e.g. due to injury. It all works really well - not sure if and/or how it would adapt to smaller sized tournaments that we have back in Europe... mathematically it certainly seems plausible, if a bit tight in case of injuries or other "replacement needing" problems.

The point of discussing that was that my team was the one on standby for the first timeslot (8:30am, 2nd of the day) that our group was appointed to. I thought this was pretty great as it took some of the initial time pressure off to get through some paperwork, admin, introductions and team talk.

Earlier in the week the [Sydney] weather turned largely overcast and showery bringing some welcome relief from the stifling heat. On Thursday it turned to heavy rain - which I got caught in sans umbrella - causing streams to flow down the city streets within minutes. Friday didn't improve much so that evening I spent much of the trip to Wollongong hoping the wet weather wouldn't follow, but it did.

Early on Saturday afternoon the heavens opened, turning many of the fields into puddle-ridden marshland and walkways with frequent traffic into mud tracks. Sunday also saw regular monsoon conditions for much of the day, before the sun finally managed to break through mid-afternoon. You couldn't, as I learned the hard (cold, wet and slimy) way while wearing Crocs barefoot, enter or exit the referee's tent without your feet sinking half an inch into the mud! Oh well, apparently Junior State Cup weekend just isn't the same without the rain. It's amusing to that in 5 years of attending Touch events, that the south-east coast of Australia, during summer, would be where I break my duck of not getting drenched :-)

The referee's tent generally remained pretty packed with few people, when they were off duty, going outside to stand watching games in the rain and damp. People came back from games, myself included, looking and feeling like drowned rats so the name of the game was to stay sheltered and get dry and warm. With so many around most of the time there was plenty of chit-chat and banter to keep spirits high and a nice atmosphere.

You'd really have to see these kids play to realize just how good they are, especially at such an early age. I was blown away watching 10-14 year olds repeatedly execute what coaches refer to as the "basic skills", for example performing ONE-HANDED roll balls on the run and on the mark almost every time. I dare say that a few of the 18s and even 16s sides would give quite a few sides in Europe a run for their money.

I had variations of "it's only juniors" said to me both in the run up and during the event, but was always sceptical - maybe it's a perspective thing. Certainly most of the kids rocked up of course to compete to win but certainly to play Touch and have fun doing so. But you'd think it was a matter of life and death for some of the coaches and parents if the child wasn't doing something right (coach) or a decision went against a (parent's) child, by some of the "colourful" outbursts. A slightly more amusing confirmation came when I was returning to the referee's tent on Sunday after retrieving a cuppa from the refreshments tent, when I passed three 10 year old girls each drinking a Powerade and wearing full leg length SKINS compression tights. Now I wear a size S in these things and my legs are a good 3 feet long. These kids were barely as tall as my hips! So I found a few things running through my mind, like "Good lord they really make these things in your size?" and "C'mon, you're TEN!" as well as the more practical "How'd you manage to get your folks to shell out $140 for these things?" before reverting to "You're TEN!" So yes, junior Touch is taken pretty darn seriously.

On-field, I refereed 18s games all weekend with the exception of a couple of 16s semis and the 12s grand final. I was very pleased to get the final appointment as it put me inside the top 25 of the 300+ referees at the event. My medal (I get the impression they're handed out to commemorate appointments rather than just for showing up) is hanging on my bedroom wall now, a souvenir of a unique event in my Australian trip that I just couldn't have bought.