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Referees

Every scheduled match needs someone to referee it. Manage → Referees is where you staff the tournament and find the hours nobody is covering.

Coverage​

The coverage view answers one question: for every pitch, in every hour, is there a referee? Gaps are the point of the screen — an uncovered 11:00 on pitch 3 is a match that will start late while somebody is found.

Referees can be assigned to matches individually, in batches, or automatically across the schedule. Auto-assignment respects the constraints you would apply by hand:

  • a referee is not assigned to two matches at once;
  • a referee gets a break between matches;
  • where clubs supply referees, a club does not referee its own team's match.

The last one is worth setting up properly. It is the constraint that gets noticed, and it depends on teams being linked to their clubs — see teams and clubs.

Availability​

Referees have availability like pitches do. A referee who can only work Saturday morning is described once, and assignment respects it everywhere. Without availability, auto-assignment will happily give someone a match at a time they told you they could not do.

Duties beyond refereeing​

Tournaments often need people at a slot who are not the referee — a timekeeper, a scorer, a pitch marshal. These are handled as duties alongside referee assignments, on matches or on whole timeslots, and can also be auto-assigned.

Each referee can be given a personal link to their own schedule: the matches they are assigned to, in order, with pitch and time. From that link they can enter results for their matches.

  • Send links to all referees at once, so nobody has to be handed a printout.
  • Rotate a link if one is shared beyond the person it was meant for. The old link stops working immediately.

The link needs no account and no password, which is what makes it usable by volunteers who will do this once.

During the tournament​

Coverage is not a setup task you finish. Referees do not turn up, matches run late, and a re-solve moves matches into hours that were staffed for something else. Check coverage after every schedule change, in the same pass as reviewing the schedule itself.