Canadian Norwegian referees Test
On Saturday in Zenica, and ancient town north of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina play host to Azerbaijan in a match in Division 3D of the European Nations Cup and the referee is Ashley Morton of Norway. It is his very first Test.
Ashley Morton. Norwegian name? No. He was born in Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada and educated at Pearson United World College in Victoria before going on to the University of Toronto to study electrical engineering. That is a long way from Norway.
“I got a phone call from a recruiter who said ‘What do you think about the idea of moving to Norway?’ And my wife and I decided to give it a shot.”
So in March 2008 he moved to Norway to build boats. He is an electrical design coordinator for a major shipyard (Ulstein Verft) and he and his wife Kathryn live on an island in western Norway – Ulsteinvik.
Brave wife? “My wife is a Ph.D. candidate in fish biology (and where there are fish, there are usually boats to build). Relatively, she was a much better player than me, captaining her provincial senior women’s team in Canada before she retired (at age 24). Now, she’s also a certified referee, but she prefers to coach. We will be starting a club here in our “rugby hinterland” over the course of this winter.”
Morton started refereeing in Canada “because I really wasn’t very good at playing, though I still play a game or two when I have a free weekend”. “I did the single biggest chunk of my development with the “tiny perfect” referees’ society in Newfoundland. This was a group with only about 6-10 active referees, but it had a full-scale development program, we met regularly over pints to do video analysis of our games, appointed 3 qualified refs to almost every match down to schoolboys, and were good friends. If I can do any work to recreate some of that here, I will.”
In Norway there are also 6-10 active referees “with an additional half-dozen who can be called upon in a pinch. In general, we have too few games to give out to interested referees, when we talk about regular 15-aside club-championship matches. However, 7-aside and 10-aside tournaments are quite popular, and we never seem to have enough referees for those!”
In Canada Morton had refereed senior club rugby and in Norway his top experience to date has been to referee the “Nordic Cup” – Club champions from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland (“two full matches on the same day in that one – ouch!”).
“Technically, we’re not a society, we’re simply the ‘refereeing committee’ of the Norwegian Rugby Union – Dommerutvalg of the Norges Rugbyforbund. However, I’m looking to shift the structure to a more traditional referees’ society over the course of the next year. Interestingly, Norwegian has no word for ‘referee’, so I am a ‘judge’. A match has a ‘head judge’ and two ‘line judges’.”
Understandably the Laws have not been translated into Norwegian though “some parts of them have been translated on an as-needed basis by coaches and referees, but no official translation exists.
“Rugby in Norway has been largely an ex-pat undertaking, though there are some people working hard to change that. For example, this Fall, I was proud to help organise our first IRB level 1 refereeing course taught in Norwegian.”
What’s rugby like in Norway? “Six serious clubs (more or less in the cities most people have heard of – Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Oslo, Oslo Students, Tonsberg). However, many clubs struggling along with 10-20 members, are trying to get folks into things. Our largest difficulty is geography. Any game between a west-coast team (Stavanger, Bergen) and one of the others is usually a plane flight. I, on the other hand, usually drive the trip in my red VW Polo, but that’s a minimum of six hours to the closest club. Still, I get to see my new country.”
And the weather? “Norway has real contrasts. We’re a lot further North than any of the populated areas of Canada. Our southernmost club is further North than the entire Scottish mainland, for example. But thanks to the Gulf Stream, the coastal areas are pretty mild. All the ports are ice-free, and I will likely even be snow-free for most of the winter, but a 40km drive inland can move you from +5 degrees to -20. Still, we do not play through the winter. I have certainly refereed with snow falling (both in Canada and in Norway), but never with more than a dusting on the ground.”
Role models? “I can’t say I do, exactly – I’ve not had enough chance to watch rugby on TV to learn about their various styles. The person I’ve learned the most about refereeing from is probably my friend in Canada, Bryan Arciero, though I will do my best to make sure that he never forgets that I got a Test before he did.”
What do you like about refereeing? “The interaction with the players – jokes, comments and observations during and after the match. I love chatting to football/soccer referees about the positive relationships with players, because I feel very privileged. That, and there’s no question that I get to participate at a higher level with a whistle in my hand than I would be able to as a player.”
