European Zone Referees’ Seminar

I returned last night from Brussels where I attended the annual European Zone Referees’ Seminar. These events take place in the three FIK zones, Europe, Americas and Asia and serve the purpose of both updating referee skills and as a selection forum for referees for upcoming regional championships and in some years World Championships.

For those of you who have not attended one of these functions, the format tends to be fairly consistent every year and in all three zones. The ZNKR send a delegation of three 8^th dans as instructors to share their knowledge and each member country sends a group of referee candidates to benefit from their instruction. The referees work together in two groups; red numbers – who are candidates for the next regional championships and black numbers – people who are either newer referees or who are not available for selection but who want to keep their skills up to scratch. Each country also sends groups of fighters to take part in the shiai.

The event takes place over a weekend and includes keiko sessions on Friday and Saturday nights and at the end of Sunday morning. The grand finale is a grading examination up to 7^th dan, which in Europe is one of the few opportunities to try for this grade. The weekend is a great chance to meet up with old kendo friends and to make new ones.

The actual seminar takes the form of referees working together in groups of three and the 8^th dan instructors stop the shiai to point out mistakes and invite discussion from the rest of the group. Candidates are numbered according to age and seniority and each session starts with the lowest numbers first on court. For some reason, probably due to the retirement of some of my senior colleagues, I was number two red. I therefore had the pleasure of being in the first group to referee; the one that invariably gets stopped most often to set the tone for the weekend. In some years there seems to be an emphasis on a particular aspect of the shiai rules. This year it was not so. The sessions served more to emphasise correct positioning of each group and the criteria for judging valid yuko datotsu.

The groups of fighters did a great job, treating each shiai as if it were the final of the World Championship. This year I was particularly pleased to see that the British national coach, Malcolm Goodwin, had arrived with a team of our younger competitors who fought well and gained a number of compliments on their attitude and team spirit from the EKF organisers.

My last job before leaving was to sit on the grading panel for the first to fifth dan group. This was of course an honour and a pleasure to do, but sadly it meant that I was not able to watch the 6^th and 7^th dan grading which took place simultaneously in the next court. Two candidates out of 14 passed 7^th dan including Mr Kurogi from Belgium. Our team manager Malcolm Goodwin was one of the few to pass 6^th dan and in my court two British guys Alan Thompson and Keith Holmes passed 5^th dan. Congratulations to all the successful candidates, name checked or otherwise. I am now going to unload a case of duty-free wine and two sets of wet kendo equipment from the car.

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15WKC Referees Seminar

As most kendoka are aware, the 15^th World Kendo Championships will be held in Italy in three months time. I imagine that the organising committee in Italy is working flat out to ensure that such a major event runs smoothly. The FIK team in Tokyo are working equally hard to supply the support and technical resources to guarantee success. Part of their role is the selection and training of the referee team for Novara. Having just returned from Narita where the first of two referee training seminars for this event was held, I am using this opportunity to give my readers an insight into what goes on “behind the scenes”.

The 15WKC will have 36 referees. If you include the shinpan cho and the four shinpan shunin, this takes the referee team to 41 people. We were gathered together in Narita together with 20 of Kanto’s top university players, to work on our refereeing skills. The whole event took place under the watchful eye of senior members of FIK and Tatsuo Hayashi and Alex Bennett were on hand to provide translation for the non-Japanese speakers. It all ran like clockwork, with hotels, busses and gym schedules fitting together without a hitch.

The format of the training was to apportion referees to two courts and to change our groups over two days to give us experience of working with different partners. These were drawn from Japan, Korea, USA, Canada, Brazil, Taipei and eight European countries. There was very little lecturing. The shiai continued relentlessly with discussion over any split point decisions, or less than optimum referee positioning introduced by the shinpan-shunin. Most of the fighters took chudan with one jodan player present and a nito session was introduced, with Toda sensei and another nito player showing their skills against some of the students.

Normally at events of this kind, criticism is heaviest at the beginning and diminishes as we adjust to working together. I had the pleasure of being the first shushin in my court after the opening ceremony and received a well deserved mauling for some court positioning issues. Being dissected in front of 40 seventh and eight dans focuses the mind brilliantly and our performance steadily improved, so that the afternoon and following days sessions generated hardly any discussion.

Very few new technical issues were evident. Tsuki was seen frequently but did not make ippon, (usually because of accuracy), and dou was seen frequently and in most cases succeeded. The only controversial question was on the point to which fighters should withdraw at the instruction “wakare”. Apparently International rules say “past the Nakayui” and All Japan rules say “to the kisaki”.

This was followed by sayonara party to let off steam and cement friendships and the instruction to reconvene for another two days of training in Novara.

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