Proposals

The Umpiring Crisis - Proposal from Alan Ransome to ETTA National Council January 2008

Introduction
It is generally accepted that the lack of qualified umpires in the ETTA is causing the standard of officiating at all levels of competition in England to decline and despite this matter being discussed on several occasions at Council in recent meetings, the problems seem to be becoming worse.

Following discussions with Stuart Sherlock, the Chairman of the National Umpires and Referees Committee, at the Stockton on Tees 4 Star and with George Tyler on more than one occasion at recent events, I am submitting this paper in an attempt to highlight the issues and instigate initiatives that will improve matters.

Having studied the subject, I have produced some proposals. Other comments and proposals are of course welcome and I hope that this paper will help to produce a result and an answer to these difficulties.

My paper is divided into 4 sections:
Recruitment for now
Recruitment for specific events
Recruitment for the future The ATTU

Recruitment for Now
From discussions with Stuart Sherlock, it is clear that the National Umpires and Referees Committee are prepared to provide tutors to put on courses on umpiring whenever required throughout the country. However, they are not prepared to do all the organising. In any case, in my view this is the role of the Development Department. My suggestion is that we organise a seminar at a number of the ETTA events on the basis of a minimum of one per region per year. The ETTA events could be the Grand Prix, Junior 4 star events, British League etc.

The Development Department in conjunctions with the Volunteers Manager (Martin Ireland) and the Regional District Officers to prepare all of the advance publicity with the help of NURC and to circulate it to all counties, local leagues, Premier clubs, participants in the tournament and VETTS members in the region, inviting them to attend the event and seminar. The seminar to be an introduction to umpiring and to give the people who come along to the event the opportunity to umpire some matches. Lunch would be provided and the participants would be expected to be involved in the seminar and to umpire for some of the day.

This then must be followed up by the RDO or Volunteer Manager to encourage the attendees to achieve their umpiring qualification and to be included on both their County and ETTA Umpires lists. In large regions such as the South West, there should be at least 2 of these per year, say one in Devon and one in Avon.

Recruitment for Events

Tournaments
The problems are strongly highlighted at an event at which there are insufficient umpires when there is no alternative other than to have matches umpired by the players and when the umpires who do attend are overworked to such a degree that they feel that they are being abused. This inevitably creates resentment and a demotivation for the umpires to attend future events.

My understanding is that for ETTA events a list is sent to each official umpire asking them to apply for events that they are interested in officiating and from the results on the ground, clearly this is not working as well as it needs to.

For the tournament in which I have recently been involved, the Stockton on Tees 4 Star, in addition to mailing the umpires that we felt would support us, members of our county committee spent time at tournaments issuing personal invitations to umpires to attend and this, together with the fact that there was no clash this year with the VETTS British League date, helped to achieve a larger attendance of umpires.

At events such as the 4 Star junior tournaments, and I would suggest National Championships for Juniors or Under 14s, if after all efforts have been used and there are insufficient umpires to give the umpires reasonable breaks, that the system of an umpire controlling 3 or 4 tables be adopted to lighten the workload of the umpires as it is at present.

My proposal therefore so far as tournaments are concerned is that the organising committee as part of their remit, appoint an official recruitment officer whose role it is to ensure that there are sufficient umpires attending the event and that the NURC co-operate with the Development Department to establish seminars at major tournaments to actively recruit additional local umpires to help on the day and to take the introductory course.

British League
I have attended a number of British League events over this season and have found that the umpiring situation in the main has been less than satisfactory. The first weekend of the Premier at Progress in September, there was again a shortage of umpires although only 4 tables were being used. The first weekend of the Northern British League at which all 4 divisions were played was entirely unsatisfactory with only half the number of umpires required. The standard of officiating on the tables that did not have official umpires was very poor and resulted in disputes, bad language and a number of unsatisfactory situations.

The second Northern British League weekend which was in Sheffield was fine. There were 8 umpires and the whole event was entirely satisfactory. The 3rd weekend over at Halton saw only half the number of umpires and whilst it was not as shambolic as Hyndburn, it was still unsatisfactory.

The main point here is that the entry fees for the British League are much higher than other competitions and this is on the basis that official umpires will be provided and in my view the clubs are entitled, with entry fees at this level, to have the matches conducted in an appropriate manner. It also degrades significantly the British League if we have instances such as the ones that were endured at Hyndburn.

I have 2 proposals with regard to this: That the people recruiting the umpires go first of all to the clubs themselves and introduce a financial incentive to the clubs to bring an umpire with them. We would only need 50% take up of this and this could go a long way towards solving the umpiring problem. If this was done sufficiently early in the season, if there was still a shortfall then further recruitment activity could take place.

If the funding from the entry fees from the British League were not sufficient, and I hope that they would be, an additional surcharge could be levied on the clubs to help to cover this with the ones that are providing umpires receiving sufficient incentive to effectively produce a reduction in cost from their perspective. The detail of all this would need to be worked out but it is the principle I am looking to establish.

That venues are used for the British League that can actually provide the right conditions for the matches to be played. This obviously includes the playing conditions as of now but could also include a local organiser who has the ability to recruit local umpires and that a payment could be made to the organiser not just for the venue but also to cover the cost of the recruitment of umpires. Clubs could be given the option of bidding for staging these matches on the basis of them being able to provide all the facilities including the officials.

Long Term Recruitment
We have in place at the moment a junior umpires award but my understanding is that the take up of this is relatively small and the overall effect is not substantial. I believe that it is important to create feeling in the sport at junior level that the umpiring and officiating is important and acceptance that a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction can be gained from being a qualified umpire and working on the circuit. There seems to be very little done at the moment to encourage this within the junior sector of the sport.

Here I have 2 suggestions. One of them could be regarded as a conflict of interest as it would involve the recently launched Butterfly Skills, but I have no problem in declaring this as it would not be an issue either way from the sponsorship perspective.

Through my involvement in other sports, I know that England Squash, the governing body for Squash Rackets in this country, have a similar skills programme to the new ETTA model under the title of Unsquashable Mini Squash and that they have training and awards for juniors within this programme.

This suggestions is that the ETTA include within the Butterfly Skills programme awards for officials at intermediate the advanced levels with rewards and certificates exactly the same as passing the playing tests. This would ensure that all of the youngsters going through the Skills programme had an understanding of officiating and received some reward for passing tests. Information could be provided on how to graduate from the advanced level into the full ETTA scheme.

To enter into discussions with the English Schools Table Tennis Association to see how umpiring could be part of their activities and how information about umpiring could be provided to the 10,000 or so players who participate in their events.

ATTU
In discussions with George Tyler, it is clear that the members of the ATTU are despondent that the ETTA have decided not to recognise their association but hopeful to see from the minutes of the NURC meeting on 15 December that co-operating is existing between the NURC and the ATTU.

I understand fully the concern of management that the establishment of an organisation like the ATTU could have serious adverse effects on ETTA events if relationships became strained. Having spoken to key members associated with the ATTU, I am satisfied that this will not happen with the current leadership and therefore would recommend that there should be close co-operation between the ETTA and ATTU in the interests of overcoming the crisis of umpiring.

One of the main ATTU concerns is the status of officials who they believe are not given sufficient kudos and recognition for the work which they provide on a voluntary basis. I am of the opinion that attention should be given to this and initiatives introduced which recognise the important work carried out by umpires at our events and to find ways of raising the status of the technical officials at these competitions. This can only help to motivate the voluntary umpires to in turn become more numerous and to be prepared to give more time.

Suggestions could include a section on the website for umpiring issues where the names of all of the officials who are working at our events are listed; names and photographs of these officials be included in the annual report; care be taken to ensure that the workload for the officials is not too onerous at these events.

This is not an area of the sport that I am involved in and therefore my observations are from watching what is happening and talking to many of the key people involved. I am sure that other suggestions can come forward from people with more knowledge in this area than I have which would be able to help resolve this difficulty. My view is that these discussions should take place and that we should be looking for an increase in the number of technical officials available in our sport rather than allowing the numbers to decline as they have been doing in recent years.

Alan Ransome