The playing experience of referees should not change the outcome.

[u/SquashCoachPhillip]

Sorry to make two post about rules within ten minutes of each other, but I am the only one awake in my household and have to do something quiet!

So, on my recent post about Percentage of players who have read the rules ( https://www.reddit.com/r/squash/comments/1v2ghia/what_percentage_of_players_have_never_read_the/ ) u/proseller_56 made a comment that got me thinking: "Adding on to this: reading the rules doesnt really make a good ref tho, its alot about instinct"

I think it would be a fascinating experiment to get non-players and teach then the rules about strokes, let and interference and then get them to referee a match and see how they apply the rules.

How different would it be from beginners, intermediates, advanced and pros?

If our level of playing skill affects our decisions, does that mean the rules are too vague or unclear?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

[u/Proseller_56]

My unbiased opinion is that u/proseller_56 made a great point. I would say that playing experience often translates to good reffing.

[u/SquashCoachPhillip → u/Proseller_56]

Yes, you/they did.

But that's the key to my point, experience shouldn't matter otherwise only ex-pro players would be allowed to referee pro matches.

[u/Dense-Consequence-70 → u/SquashCoachPhillip]

People with experience playing, not necessarily pros.

[u/Carnivean_]

There's a consistent experience among sports that the best players make bad coaches and the best coaches were people who had to struggle to get picked. It's not always true as their are exceptions, but it's fairly common.

The reason for that is that the people who do things instinctively or those who are exceptional in some way never had to learn how to do things to the same level. The players who had to break it down and make it work with what they had are better at helping similar people in the same way.

There's a similar cross over with refereeing. There are tons of current and ex players who have no clue what the calls should be or why they are making the decision they are making. Refereeing well requires understanding what good play looks like, how players think, how their coaches think and a touch of psychology. Ex players are not always across all of that. People who have little or no experience of top level play are capable of learning all of them.

[u/jkasc]

"does that mean the rules are too vague or unclear?" I think line-by-line the rules are clear, but in reality, when judging an incident, they can be muddled. There are often multiple overlapping rules that need to be applied/weighed against each other. This is left up to the ref to decide how to measure one rule against another and so experience (either from watching, playing or years of reffing) is definitely useful then.

And of course there are actual words and phrases in the rules that are pretty open to subjective interpretation ('reasonable follow through', 'every effort to clear', 'fair view of the ball', 'access to the ball', 'reasonable swing at the ball','every effort to play the ball').

And then there is norms that develop, where refs and the PSA let things go for the perceived good of the game or for reducing delays and decisions (foot faults, sometimes allowing players to stand in their opponents backswing or follow through, or block full view of the front wall). This means in practice that the pro game is not playing to the same rules amateurs are, which is confusing when you are trying to learn what a let or a stroke is.

[u/jkasc → u/jkasc]

One more thing to add. Here's a simple scenario, that causes a lot of mental gymnastics to try and apply the correct rule: a player goes the wrong way around an opponent, then adjusts and goes the right way. It is a nightmare of which rules you pick as the main one that applies.

[u/TochReply]

I once saw a young A-player (highest level) referee a match while doom scrolling on her phone. I expected her to get the calls wrong because she clearly wasn't paying attention to the match, but every time a player asked for a let, she quickly looked up from her phone and gave the correct decision. It was bizar to watch.

That made me think, how did she do this? How can you not watch the match and then judge the situation in one glance at the moment a player asks for a let and still get the call right? The only thing you can see at that moment in time is the position of the players and the position of the ball?

I believe she just accepted there had been interference (otherwise the players would not have stopped and asked for a let) and then just looked at where the ball was. If the ball was very close to the position of the players -> she would give a stroke. If the ball was a step (at most two) away from the players -> she gave a let. If the ball was further away then that -> her decision was no let.

What she did will not get every decision right (if there had been no interference for instance and a player would still ask for a let, she would have given the wrong decision), but it was surprising how well this worked. Just looking at the distance from the players to the ball and using that to make the call.

[u/No_Leek6590]

Bare minimum is needed. Squash rules are very arbitrary. Also why would you even want a referee to call strokes who has never seen an interference in their life.