5,000 EHF EURO referee video clips online

At the EHF EUROs 2010 in Austria (men) and Denmark and Norway (women) the EHF Competence Academy & Network (EHF CAN) started to scout referee education video clips by means of the SportVAS video analysis system.

The clips were used for the daily debriefing sessions with the EHF EURO referees and were later published online at the EHF CAN web portal "EHF Family" as teaching aids for the national referee education and training in the EHF member federations.

Using username and password that were given to the national chiefs of refereeing at the 2010 EHF Referee Education workshop, video clips can be viewed and downloaded for instruction courses or e-learning by the referees themselves.

This EHF archive has been extended with referee video clips from the 2011 EHF Younger Age Category events (Women’s 17 in the Czech Republic and Women’ 19 in the Netherlands), for the first time scouted by means of the FIBA Europe Techno Centre "Observer Programme" (real time) in connection with an online platform (referee website) during the tournaments.

Altogether 5,000 video clips for referee education/training have been made available by EHF CAN for both specialists and referees:

• Men’s EHF EURO 2010 in Austria – approx. 1750 clips
• Women’s EHF EURO 2010 in Denmark and Norway – approx. 1750 clips
• 2011 Women’s 17 European Championship in the Czech Republic – approx. 750 clips
• 2011 Women’ 19 European Championship in the Netherlands – approx. 750 clips

2011 EHF Guidelines for Referee Education

In addition, EHF CAN published the 2011 EHF Guidelines for Referee Education, which were produced in cooperation with the EHF TRC (Technical Refereeing Committee). The publication is now available as e-book.

EHF CAN archive online

Furthermore the EHF CAN archive including the complete documentation of the past 15 years including presentations of the EHF Refereeing Lecturers has been made available at activities.eurohandball.com

Assistance for National Federations

Both Jan Tuik, Chairman of the EHF Competition’s Commission and Sandor Andorka, EHF CC member refereeing, comment the EHF strategy as follows:

"The European Handball Federation is trying to establish a good cooperation with its member federations on technical level, in order to achieve a better understanding regarding all referee, delegate and officiating matters in the future.

This is why a clear task distribution between the national federations and the EHF needs to be accomplished. We do think that the national federations are responsible for a good basic educational programme for young referees, as well as the further development of their national and international referees.

This includes the recruitment, promotion, education and further training of both male and female referees and delegates with regard to modern on-court and off-court officiating in handball.

Therefore, it is the task of each EHF member federation to evaluate the situation on their national level in order to develop strategies, which will assist the creation of educational programmes for both referee and delegate education.

Their efforts should be coupled with the support of EHF, who will be providing them not only with the teaching material, but also with the much needed educational know-how. The EHF will be expecting reports regarding these educational activities on an annual basis."

New tool to be introduced

EHF CAN Coordinator Helmut Höritsch says:

"We will support national referee education in the best of ways, trying to make available excellent teaching aids by means of modern technology.

Apart from the already implemented scouting and analysis tools we will start a new project in cooperation with FIBA Europe Techno Centre at the Men’s EHF EURO 2012 in Serbia.

The ‘Digital Score Sheet’, the video match report used in basketball, shall be used in handball for the first time, thus opening a wide range of utilization options for all parties involved, EHF delegates, referees, coaches and media. We are prepared for technological innovations in handball."