CFL officials must still earn their stripes
‘We’re all going to be rusty when we get back’
On a positive note, nobody complained about the officiating in the Canadian Football League this year.
The stripes were sidelined along with everyone else when an Aug. 17 vote of the league’s governors scrubbed a proposed sixgame season played in Winnipeg in a secure bubble, as a guard against the spread of COVID-19.
If the 2021 season kicks off as scheduled with pre- season action in late May — and that’s likely an optimistic timeline — many CFL officials won’t have seen any game action for about 18 months.
“We’re all going to be rusty when we get back out there,” said referee Murray Clarke.
That’s really not much of a worry for a senior official like Clarke, who has 524 CFL games and 28 seasons under his belt, knows the rulebook inside out and has done his best to stay in great shape. Same goes for other senior officials like Dave Foxcroft, Andre Proulx and Tom Vallesi.
But senior director of officiating Darren Hackwood said he is concerned about the pandemic’s effect on the development of the less experienced crew members in the CFL’S stable of 42, those just getting their feet wet at the pro level.
“That loss of a year is definitely going to be a bit of an obstacle,” Hackwood said in mid- December. “We always talk about football officials not getting enough reps. For a Grey Cup official, that game will be their 15th or 16th game of the year, which isn’t a high number. For a newer official who has only worked a handful of CFL games, that’s going to be a big obstacle.
“So, for the officials on our roster who would fit that category, we’re going to try to get them as many reps as possible early in the season, potentially double up on pre-season games, to speed up their ability to get comfortable at the pro level. Because the game is much faster and there is an adjustment period for these officials.”
For a handful of years, CFL teams have welcomed officials — usually in pairs or groups of four — into their training camps to officiate practices. Hackwood said the league will put more emphasis on that initiative prior to the 2021 season.
“We’ ll probably do that more often. It just gets them out on the field, gets them used to the speed of the receivers and seeing the ball.”
Those officials will already have gone to their own training camp in Toronto, about a week prior, where they take a rules exam and undergo the dreaded Cooper test to determine their VO2 max capacity, the measurement of a body’s ability to use oxygen most efficiently. In its traditional format, established in 1968 by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, test subjects run as far as they can on a track in 12 minutes, which was seen as the optimal time to determine VO2 max.
The CFL does things differently, as they have their officials run 2.5 kilometres as fast as they can. Officials are graded according to their age range and must meet a performance threshold.
“I actually like it a lot better than most of the things they’ve had us do,” said Clarke, who turns 60 on Jan. 1. “It’s pretty straightforward. It’s a mile and a half, just as fast as you can do it. If I can do it in 11 minutes, then I’m in better shape than somebody who can do it in 12 minutes.
“When I started in the league, we would go on the ( exercise) bike and they would change the intensity on the bike. Then we did power walking. I always thought that was a little ridiculous. Then we did the beep test for a while. It always seemed to favour smaller guys.”
The beep test is a lengthy series of 20- metre shuttle runs that must be completed in ever diminishing time periods.
“The speed keeps picking up all the time, so if you’re a big, strapping, 270- pound guy like Al Bradbury, it’s not quite fair when you’ve got some guy who is 170 pounds running back and forth at those higher levels,” said Clarke. Hackwood expects most CFL officials will be ramping up their individual fitness regimes early in the new year.
“I’m sure some of them at least have probably left their fitness routines behind for the last couple of months,” he chuckled. “They’re going to have to dust it off and get ready for the season. We do have some officials in spectacular shape and they compete with each other and it is a challenge to get that run done in time.”
The competition spawns camaraderie and that is just one of the things Clarke said he has missed during an entire year without the game.
“It’s a great fraternity we’re in. The guys are all like- minded. It’s the camaraderie I’m going to miss when I retire. I missed that this year. We’ve all been talking about how empty it seems.”