Our sport is currently an environment in which referees are afraid to hand out penalty cards, a crucial facet of their work. This is in turn creating an unsafe environment for our fencers, as well as putting the tournament staff themselves at risk. There are multiple contributing factors to this issue. Referees feel a lack of support and protection in their actions, many fear retaliation from their fencers, be it against themselves or against the other fencer in the bout. Others are simply inexperienced, yet to learn what they should be looking out for and thus fear being wrong. There are steps we can and should take to support and educate our refs, but to facilitate such we must also look at the intended purpose of cards and reframe how we think and feel about them.
Before approaching how we should view the carding system, we must consider how we already do. Penalty cards exist as a way to implement the rules of the event and to uphold safety and integrity standards. We unfortunately do not yet have standardised consequences or systems of progression for cards, but there are overarching themes in how they are given out within the bout. It often takes multiple minor offences or a gradual ramp-up of intensity before a yellow card is given. These yellow cards are often assigned alongside a form of point penalty, increasing their gravity which leads these cards to be frequently interpreted as a form of punishment. After a select number of yellow cards it will escalate to a red, resulting in a different, harsher penalty and eventually leading to a black card, traditionally resulting in ejection from an event.
Fencers often feel a need to ‘agree’ with the referee’s decision when receiving a yellow card, the lowest ranked of the three, otherwise they become upset, often feeling personally offended or that the ref is incompetent. Many people wonder why they are being ‘punished’ for something they feel was not truly out of line. Others may feel shame and embarrassment. It’s these emotions that make referees feel hesitant to make the call in carding a fencer who has explicitly breached the rules. The referees’ hesitance to give cards as required allows fencers to get away with increasingly dangerous offences, moving the bar of safety further and further away from where it needs to be.
At this point we need to take a look at verbal warnings. Many competitions and referees (sometimes against the wishes of organisers) implement the verbal warning as a ‘less official’ tool. These are primarily used when the referee believes that a bout is at risk of getting dangerous but does not feel comfortable giving a card. There are many different types of scenarios in which this occurs. For example: Fencer A has committed prior offences but is ahead in points, in a competition where yellow cards award points to the opposite fencer. In an exchange, both fencers A and B exceed intensity but the referee is hesitant to hand both parties a card as this would lead to both parties getting a point and Fencer A, who has committed more offences overall, would win the match. Both fencers are given a verbal warning instead, allowing the bout to continue at a heightened intensity and increasing the chance of harm coming to the fencers.
Verbal warnings are usually received well by fencers, being interpreted as something friendly and casual in manner. Despite being used to try and de-escalate situations they only serve to make the situation worse. Alternative forms of communication within the bout create rifts and divides, fostering different levels of severity and seriousness that were not previously there, implicating the carding system to be something much more threatening than it must be in order to function. The existence of such rifts makes the often already quite harsh yellow cards seem even more intimidating to those involved, further reinforcing the want for an alternative approach. This results in verbal warnings being used with increasing frequency in place of a deserved yellow card, creating a vicious cycle that locks referees away from being able to naturally escalate in accordance with the fencer’s own actions.
Now that we have a better understanding of the issue currently faced and the environment in which it resides, we can begin the approach to a solution. Our sport has a rampant issue with trying to find answers to solved problems, our penalty systems being a prime example of such. In this case, we need look no further than their original purpose. Penalty cards are, and always have been, intended as a universal language. The penalty card finds its origins in FIFA with often revered referee, Ken Aston. Following confusion during the 1966 World Cup, Aston realised a more succinct form of communication was needed that would not be hindered by language barriers and other common breakdowns of communication. The idea of the system itself was allegedly inspired by a set of traffic lights. “As I drove down Kensington High Street, the traffic light turned red. I thought, ‘Yellow, take it easy; red, stop, you’re off.’” Aston was quoted.1
With this in mind it makes sense to approach our own system in such a manner. The penalty card should simply stand to be a form of communication between the referee and their fencers. Communication is an intricate thing, with many forms and facets. Cues such as body language, facial expression and the vocabulary used all play into how a call may be perceived. The semantics of such things are stripped down to the absolute minimum when the message is delivered in the simple form of a rectangular piece of coloured cardstock. This reduces effort needed on the part of both the referee and the fencer.
The use of this system also depends on a complete eradication of the use of verbal warnings, letting the yellow card take their place as a reminder to the fencer to take care in their actions. With this precedent it becomes easier for the referee to distribute red and black cards as they are simply different sentences to say to their fencers. There is no emotion carried in these words. Streamlining the interaction in this way removes apprehension from the referees’ shoulders and helps to mitigate the negative feelings fencers may experience when receiving cards in the abrupt and disjointed manner of that where the verbal warning is implemented. The yellow card stands simply to remind the players to keep safety in mind, giving them a chance to check their emotions and actions.
The realm in which cards are looked at consists of many moving parts. There are many other frameworks in which cards must be acknowledged and viewed to help normalise their existence for fencers and referees. All of these are important to remember but sometimes it is the simplest of which that is the easiest to lose sight of, which in this case is remembering to view the penalty card as they are truly intended: a universal form of language.
Melbourne Fencing Society 