Jack
03-03-2010, 02:42 PM
I have received a reply from SPLRefs.com to an earlier post I put up on the Bounce that was copied over here (http://www.hibs.net/message/showthread.php?t=176511). Here is the reply
Hi Jack, thanks for taking the time to post your feedback, it's appreciated. I'll try and answer your points as best I can, however I'll give you little bit of background as to who we are etc.
We are a small group (there are three of us) of football fans who have a genuine interest in trying improve refereeing standards in football. We firmly believe that by having more open dialogue between clubs, the fans and the SFA is the way forward in addressing some of the issues we have experienced over the last few seasons regarding referees.
We launched a little over two seasons ago and sought the go-ahead from message boards from all SPL clubs to post on their site. We received positive feedback from the majority of teams and we post threads similar to the ones on HibeesBounce on all but two SPL teams. We appreciate the support we received from these sites (in particular Jamie on this site) as you are an integral part of making our site a success.
Turning to the points you raised:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
If all SPLrefs.com are doing to work together with the fans to improve refereeing standards in Scotland is posting who the ref will be (and even then on only half the Hibs fans forums) can I respectfully ask how that will help?
Initially, we wanted to understand fans reactions to our posts on their sites and to see if our site could work in principle by providing posting useful information on who the referee will be in their next game. This has been a success and we get a lot of positive feedback on this as it's posted on the fans forum that each particular fan tends to frequent most, thus making it more convenient for them and allows them to discuss the latest referee appointment.
We include links to our site in these threads as there is a lot of interesting stats relating to all SPL teams, referees and who they have booked, including the result of the game. Again feedback has been positive from the more stat minded people. Additionally, for those of you that like to punt of the football it can perhaps give you an indication on what might be a decent punt!
More recently (in the last month), we have started posting a weekly summary of refereeing performances at each of the SPL games. We highlight this via fans forums to encourage debate both on each teams message board and also to the article we have posted on our site.
Our aim is to try and capture the key points raised on fans forums and our site relating to particular incidents within games and try to engage with the SFA using our site as a middle man to help improve communication and hopefully clear up some questions that have been raised.
I hope you will see that in the last month or so we have tried to do more on fans forums and we want to try and continue this as much as our free time will allow us to.
In terms of not posting on Hibs.net - we approached them well over a year ago and they weren't too keen on us posting on their site so we didn't pursue this further. I'd like to revisit this and if you wouldn't mind could you post a copy of this response onto the thread where another reasonable poster called Jack [He’s here, he’s there he’s every ******* where, that ‘reasonable poster called Jack’ :faf:] has posted and I'll PM the admin team asking if they would be happy for us to post on their site similar to what we do on here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
There are numerous threads here, and I’d imagine on other fans forums too, debating and commenting the performances of referees at matches. I cannot recall any sort of response from SPLrefs.com. Indeed, while ‘you’ encourage comments from fans on your own website, none of these appear to get a response either.
Another fair point and this is essentially down to the amount of free time we have available to do this. Rest assured we do take note of the comments but, just don't have time to reply as we post on 14 different forums each week. We'd like to improve on this if possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
Our referee last Saturday saw fit to hand out a record number of bookings to Hibs players (for this season), 4 in one game, in a match that no-one could describe as dirty.
I'm assuming this is in response to the question we asked in our weekly refs round up article? You comments in reply to this are very useful and constructive and it's easy for us to pull out the salient points you have raised - unfortunately this is not always the case on every message board!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
I’ll PM this as well as I don’t expect a reply on your thread will be read by you!
I hope you are ok that I've posted a reply to you on this thread rather than PM?
We do read and listen, perhaps we need to more acknowledging and we'll do our best to improve this.
Finally, we are currently trying to engage in communication with the SFA to get their buy in to our site, we have had some initial correspondance with them and it's been positive so far. We're hopeful they will be receptive to our aims as we believe it's a great opportunity to be more open with the fans who are the lifeblood of our game.
Apologies for the length of this post, however I hope it's answered your main points and it's given you an insight into our website.
We are always happy to receive feedback.
Kind regards
Gavin
SPLrefs.com - SPL Referees Stats (http://www.splrefs.com/)
Hi Jack, thanks for taking the time to post your feedback, it's appreciated. I'll try and answer your points as best I can, however I'll give you little bit of background as to who we are etc.
We are a small group (there are three of us) of football fans who have a genuine interest in trying improve refereeing standards in football. We firmly believe that by having more open dialogue between clubs, the fans and the SFA is the way forward in addressing some of the issues we have experienced over the last few seasons regarding referees.
We launched a little over two seasons ago and sought the go-ahead from message boards from all SPL clubs to post on their site. We received positive feedback from the majority of teams and we post threads similar to the ones on HibeesBounce on all but two SPL teams. We appreciate the support we received from these sites (in particular Jamie on this site) as you are an integral part of making our site a success.
Turning to the points you raised:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
If all SPLrefs.com are doing to work together with the fans to improve refereeing standards in Scotland is posting who the ref will be (and even then on only half the Hibs fans forums) can I respectfully ask how that will help?
Initially, we wanted to understand fans reactions to our posts on their sites and to see if our site could work in principle by providing posting useful information on who the referee will be in their next game. This has been a success and we get a lot of positive feedback on this as it's posted on the fans forum that each particular fan tends to frequent most, thus making it more convenient for them and allows them to discuss the latest referee appointment.
We include links to our site in these threads as there is a lot of interesting stats relating to all SPL teams, referees and who they have booked, including the result of the game. Again feedback has been positive from the more stat minded people. Additionally, for those of you that like to punt of the football it can perhaps give you an indication on what might be a decent punt!
More recently (in the last month), we have started posting a weekly summary of refereeing performances at each of the SPL games. We highlight this via fans forums to encourage debate both on each teams message board and also to the article we have posted on our site.
Our aim is to try and capture the key points raised on fans forums and our site relating to particular incidents within games and try to engage with the SFA using our site as a middle man to help improve communication and hopefully clear up some questions that have been raised.
I hope you will see that in the last month or so we have tried to do more on fans forums and we want to try and continue this as much as our free time will allow us to.
In terms of not posting on Hibs.net - we approached them well over a year ago and they weren't too keen on us posting on their site so we didn't pursue this further. I'd like to revisit this and if you wouldn't mind could you post a copy of this response onto the thread where another reasonable poster called Jack [He’s here, he’s there he’s every ******* where, that ‘reasonable poster called Jack’ :faf:] has posted and I'll PM the admin team asking if they would be happy for us to post on their site similar to what we do on here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
There are numerous threads here, and I’d imagine on other fans forums too, debating and commenting the performances of referees at matches. I cannot recall any sort of response from SPLrefs.com. Indeed, while ‘you’ encourage comments from fans on your own website, none of these appear to get a response either.
Another fair point and this is essentially down to the amount of free time we have available to do this. Rest assured we do take note of the comments but, just don't have time to reply as we post on 14 different forums each week. We'd like to improve on this if possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
Our referee last Saturday saw fit to hand out a record number of bookings to Hibs players (for this season), 4 in one game, in a match that no-one could describe as dirty.
I'm assuming this is in response to the question we asked in our weekly refs round up article? You comments in reply to this are very useful and constructive and it's easy for us to pull out the salient points you have raised - unfortunately this is not always the case on every message board!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack;
I’ll PM this as well as I don’t expect a reply on your thread will be read by you!
I hope you are ok that I've posted a reply to you on this thread rather than PM?
We do read and listen, perhaps we need to more acknowledging and we'll do our best to improve this.
Finally, we are currently trying to engage in communication with the SFA to get their buy in to our site, we have had some initial correspondance with them and it's been positive so far. We're hopeful they will be receptive to our aims as we believe it's a great opportunity to be more open with the fans who are the lifeblood of our game.
Apologies for the length of this post, however I hope it's answered your main points and it's given you an insight into our website.
We are always happy to receive feedback.
Kind regards
Gavin
SPLrefs.com - SPL Referees Stats (http://www.splrefs.com/)