I don’t think complaints is the right avenue. Aston might post and say that the referee in Auckland had a shocking game, but without seeing the actual game, and probably hearing what was said to benches and the scorebox, in most cases you can’t tell whether that’s correct or not. If it was videoed that would help, but until we get all our games recorded for TV that’s too difficult.

I think a better system is having each official assessed by a head official each season. Twice if they both line and referee so they get assessed at both. At the higher level (national league for example), I’d suggest that the supervisor should get feedback from the scorebox and both coaches as part of that assessment.

The assessments should be private, but they should have consequences – if you get a bad assessment you get a second one done next game and must do better or you get pulled.

Isn’t there surely a generic winging system in place for teams to use when they feel it necessary? I’d have thought that would be the idea place to file referee complaints to.

When Kyle and I were running the Dunedin Ice Hockey League we always filed all complaints through one email address and dealt with them accordingly. I’m not sure if we received any official complaints about referees, but if we had, we would have found a way to deal with them at the time.

You need to be careful of adding too much bureaucracy in place when there’s already a system in place to deal with odd-ball complaints.