Tester 1

The RefereePod, called PlayOn, was started by Piercey, a former rugby player and referee. They wanted to create a podcast that explains matches from a referee's perspective, as most rugby podcasts focus on players and coaches. The pod aims to bridge the gap between players and referees, providing insights into the pressures and challenges they face. They will cover both men's and women's matches, with a focus on referees. The podcast will also discuss controversial decisions and provide context to help listeners understand the referee's point of view. The hosts want to create a fun, safe, and inclusive space for discussion. They recently covered a junior sevens tournament and Aqua Rugby, a fast-paced game played in water. Cool. So, I am doing a little tester session with my mic. And, yep, this is the RefereePod. And the name of it is PlayOn. So, who are we? Why the frick have we started this, Piercey? Um, my background is within fashion management and fabric technology, but I found my way through rugby as a referee. I started off playing rugby in high school in Canada, and then played in the UK and recently moved to Australia a year and a bit ago to continue playing and, yeah, continue with reffing as well. I started refereeing once I got to Head Knocks, I'll do it to you, in the UK. It's also in Precision as well, which is incredibly annoying. And joined the Westlist Society after taking up the whistle course, that's what it's called. And, yeah, I really enjoyed refereeing. I did start off with little kiddo stuff at the beginning and then worked my way to do some men's, women's, sevens tournaments, and so on. And then I was only in it for like a year and a little bit, and then I moved to Australia and then I did another year in Oz as well. So, yeah, still fresh, but I think that's what's really exciting that I can bring to this side of the pod. I'm not an expert, I can question things and I'm learning as I go and then maybe people can learn something as well, and that's the whole point. And then Piercy says a few things. So, the reason why we started this pod, I think that there's so many bloody referee pods and I enjoy listening to all of them for all different reasons. And then I was thinking in my head, I never feel like the people that actually are in the rugby pods explain themselves from a referee perspective. And they always obviously come from a player or coach perspective, which is fair enough. And, yeah, that's why I thought, why not dedicate and chat about what we all referees probably do anyway on a weekly basis through our group chats, but actually make a podcast about it. And there's things that we might miss, things that are really exciting. Obviously over here we have our super rugby, the Women's Six Nations going on. But yeah, let's give a little bio. The pod will cover women's and men's rugby matches, which is super important. And also this will be covering a referee perspective. We might also talk about some players as well, but usually let's just do a focus on the referees. The pod is to blend the gap between players and refs. And players can listen to this. We'll make sure that we put a description in it. So if you actually want to listen about a particular match that happened or review, we'll have those details in there as well. And then have some insights into some of the pressures that we go under, but also abuse, things that we have to deal with and how do we manage that as well. Within the game, if we're in a certain situation, what would we do? When I'm referring to that, I mean games on a weekly basis. We're talking international matches or prem matches. And we have those referees obviously refereeing. And high pressure games, certain scenarios. And people disagree or agree. And let's explain it, let's delve into it. And the thought process is if we were there, you know? That way you get better context and hopefully support the referees in their decision making. Because we've got to think of it as a wider picture, right? Anyway, making sure it's fun, safe and inclusive and respectful as well is really important. Like, we're all still current refs as well, so we've had to put a context. But it's also like making sure that we're like, oh this person refereeed really badly. That's not what you would say or what you would do. You would just explain what happened, what you saw, the processes. You might see a different viewpoint. Obviously they have the best sight on the pitch and not all the videos can capture all the angles. Anyway, and yeah, let's move on to things that happened this week with refereeing. Just to open it up. I did a junior sevens tournament and that was sort of covered under 16, under 18. I was really happy, I got some girls the entire time which was really fun. And yeah, it reminded me a lot of when I played sevens in high school when I was living in Canada. That was really fun, reminded me of how easy going it is, how you're learning, developing. You're also super quick as well. Some of these girls have so much potential. And I think with the Aussie sevens girls being really good and really, how would I say, not transparent. You can watch it on TV now, you can see that development, you can see that pathway. And I think the girls see that as well, which is really exciting. Funny thing some of the kids said was, someone told me that you have to be back 10 metres for penalties. That was a bit wild. And then someone was arguing with me about them being off their feet. I think they misunderstood the call versus, oh you need to support your body weight. And then, oh yeah, we've got the scrum. I think they didn't realise that you don't have to have your nine in your scrum, especially at sevens. There's so much limited space anyway, you want to make sure that they can get back and be in defence. Because you're defending such a big field with less people. Also, Aqua Rugby. Aqua Rugby was last week, what are we, 15th of April. So it went on from April 11th, 12th and 13th, which is so much fun. It was in Sydney, Australia, in Darling Harbour. And we just had the most luscious weather ever. And just a bit of a note on the set up. You have a pontoon, so it's 30 metres by 30 metres. There's posts on either side. And when you score a try, you jump into the water. So that whole area is your try zone as well. So I think the really fun, exciting bit of it is how fast pace it is. So because it's only 30 by 30 metres, you have five players each team. And it's meant to only go for five minutes. So we ended up making it five to six minutes. And then having a one minute break, and then you swap. And full contact, full smashy smashy. It was just so much fun. I'm trying to think of any other. There's no scrums, no line outs. It's just a quick tap and go. And making sure obviously the offside line. There's no kicking and open play. Just because of how short it is, there's just not really any point. And because of how they situated it, it was in a nice little corner. So the public could sit on the side. Not in the water, they were just on the side. And there's a gap. And then there was the pontoon. So they didn't want to be all these kicking and kicking it wrong. And then be going into the crowd. And so the referees' jobs, obviously we had one who was refereeing. And the other one, I guess you could call it AR1. So assistant referee, number one. Pretty much just like a ball boy or a ball girl. We basically had to run around the pitch picking up all the balls that fell in the water. And they had these Bondi rescue lifeguards on their paddle boards getting all the balls from outside the water. Even more wild, you're probably thinking, oh, Australia, oh, open water, Darling Harbour, sharks. And what they did was they had these little bands on their ankles. They would send out vibrations so that the sharks wouldn't get them. I don't know how true that was, but it seemed pretty funny. The turf was actually insane. We all had to all wear... We didn't have to wear socks because the turf got so hot. And because it's wet and hot and people were sweaty, people's skin was just shaving off the bottom of their feet. I know it sounds really gross. So I got my referee a nice thick sock and I kept on dipping them in the water because of how hot it was. It was manageable, but the referees the day before, they all got blistered because they didn't come prepared. Anyway.