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Referees

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

There are two ways to staff it, and one tournament can use both:

  • Neutral referees on the coverage grid — a referee covers a pitch for a block of time and takes whatever is played there.
  • Teams on match duties — the competing teams whistle each other's matches between their own, and each duty is tied to one match.

Workspace layout​

The day selector, Import and one Add referee action sit beside the title and open-slot total. Grid options above the coverage matrix contains slot length, gap filtering, automatic staffing, copying a day and emailing links when available. An active gap filter stays indicated when the options are closed.

Hover over or focus a grid cell to see its pitch, time and referee details. Tap or click to keep the details open; tap again, click outside or press Escape to close. The same referee’s slots, card and time chips are highlighted together, even when names share initials. Opening details never changes an assignment. After selecting a referee, open a slot and use the explicit Assign or Remove action; Tab or Arrow Down reaches that action from the cell.

Open Summary for coverage totals, link responses and the detailed uncovered spans. Match duties retains team assignments, filters and rest settings. Long-shift warnings stay visible above the grid; select a name to open the warning on that referee’s card. The card’s warning button also reveals its exact continuous span. The warning still concerns the longest assignment run exceeding three hours on the selected day.

The X beside a Covers time removes only that assignment interval, not every time on the pitch. Availability removal and referee deletion remain separate actions. Add and import use a consistent editor with visible validation and progress. Cancel, Escape or switching entry modes asks before discarding a changed draft; closing is blocked while saving.

Referee cards start compact, showing the name, assignment count and any long-shift warning. Click the name or chevron to expand contact details, personal-link actions, availability and every assigned time. Click again to collapse. Assign stays available on the compact card; Remove referee is inside the expanded details. Warning buttons work without expanding the rest of the card.

Adding referees​

Add referee takes one referee at a time — a person, or a whole team. The Team field decides which kind: pick the team the referee represents when the teams referee each other, or leave it on Not a team — neutral referee. A referee linked to a team is never given a match that team is playing in.

For a whole crew, Add several at once takes a pasted list, and Import reads the roster you already keep in a spreadsheet — a Google Sheet shared as "Anyone with the link can view", or an .xlsx or .csv file.

The import finds the name, email and phone columns from the header row (English or Icelandic headers such as Nafn, Netfang and Sími; a separate surname column is joined onto the name) and shows every row before anything is added. A row is skipped, with the reason beside it, when it has no name, or when it is someone already on the roster or listed twice in the sheet: the same email address or, with no email, the same name and phone number. Everyone added gets the availability you set in the dialog; adjust individuals on the roster afterwards.

Imports larger than 500 rows are processed automatically in batches. Invalid email addresses are skipped with a reason; an empty email is allowed. Wait for the preview to finish before adding. If no new referees remain, the add button stays disabled and you can inspect the skipped rows. During import, the progress counts rows being processed; the result separates added, skipped and failed rows.

The coverage grid​

The Coverage grid answers one question for the day you pick: for every pitch, in every slot, is there a referee? The information button inside Grid options shows the day, number of pitches and hours the grid spans. 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. Show only pitches with gaps hides everything that is already covered.

Column width sets how long each slot is. An hour suits long matches; a tournament playing short fixtures needs a narrower column.

To place a referee by hand, press Assign on their card in the roster, then click an open slot and press Assign in its details. Auto-staff blocks fills the day's open slots in one go:

  • a referee is only placed inside their availability;
  • a referee is never on two pitches at the same time;
  • slots with a match are filled before empty ones;
  • a referee who has been on for three hours straight is rotated off when someone rested is free.

A referee planned onto more than three hours without a break is flagged under Long shifts — plan a break. Copy to all days repeats a day's availability and assignments on the other days, for a crew that works the same hours throughout; with only one other day, the button names it.

Availability​

Referees have availability like pitches do. A referee who can only work Saturday morning is described once, and assignment respects it everywhere. On the coverage grid, a referee with no availability for the day cannot be placed at all — by you, by auto-staff or by themselves.

Teams that referee each other​

Match duties, under the grid, is for tournaments where the teams whistle each other's matches. A duty is tied to a match, not to a block of time, so it takes the match's own kickoff and length — which is what makes it work on a day of 12-minute fixtures that has no free hour to roster anyone into. It lists the day's matches with who is on the whistle, filtered by All, Assigned or No referee.

It needs referees linked to teams — add one per team with the Team field set. Then Auto-assign duties gives each team duties on matches it is not playing, spreads them evenly across the teams, and avoids giving a team two duties in a row where the schedule allows. Two settings control how close a duty can come to a team's own games:

  • Rest around own match — how much quiet a team gets either side of its own match before it can be given a duty.
  • Rest after a duty — how long a team is kept off the whistle after a duty, counted from the final whistle of the match it refereed.

New availability windows start with the selected day’s event hours. Check them before saving, especially for an evening event. On match duties, availability is optional only when no window is recorded for that day; when windows exist, the whole match must fit inside one.

Blocks and match duties share conflict checks: a referee or represented team cannot cover both at the same time or referee while playing. Auto-staff blocks also respects the selected rest around own matches and match duties. Manually added blocks reserve 15 minutes around the team’s own matches.

When matches remain uncovered, check availability windows, existing blocks and duties, and playing and rest times before trying again. Add another team if nobody is free. Knockout fixtures drawn before their teams are known can carry a duty too; if the refereeing team then qualifies into that match, the duty is released.

Each referee has a personal link. From it they can:

  • set My availability for each tournament day;
  • Pick your shifts — take an open hour on a pitch, or release one of their own;
  • see Matches you referee, when they are on match duties, and open Score this match to enter the result.

What they do there shows on the roster, marked as set or claimed by the referee.

  • Email everyone their link sends every referee with an email address their link at once, so nobody has to be handed a printout. Send link on a roster card sends one; Copy link puts it on your clipboard for a text message.
  • New link issues a fresh link if one is shared beyond the person it was meant for. The old link stops working immediately; the referee's availability and shifts are kept.

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

An overlapping shift on another pitch is marked Busy instead of offering Take. Select it to see the existing pitch, venue and full shift time. A slot that begins when that shift ends remains available.

Releasing a shift opens a confirmation with its day, venue, pitch and full time range. Choose Keep shift to leave it in place or Release shift to remove it. Removing availability similarly offers Keep availability and Remove availability, with the day and time window shown. A success message confirms each removal.

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.