… that is the question.

Is it nobler to spend the long hours of one’s day at a thankless and exhausting chore? Or better to avoid refereeing where and when possible?

This is the question that was posed to me – more or less – by the entry form to this year’s Norfolk Open. It is a surprising question, in that it is normally not asked on the form. It is also an unsurprising question, in that there is not a tournament (for adults) in the UK in which the fencers do not have to referee themselves.

Even the national championships and Leon Paul Cup feature some self-refereed pools.

Since I have arrived in the UK — despite very much disliking the concept of the self-refereed event — I have contributed pretty much as much as I could, at almost every event I have attended. I am what you might call “not bad” at the whole refereeing thing (which is an attribute not shared by many of my fellow fencers), and figured that by pitching in I was improving things.

But I wonder if my contributions are actually improving things, or merely contributing to the status quo. The last tournament I attended featured a cadre of one referee who was not fencing — and he was one of the organisers. Between the men’s and women’s foil events, there was £2,000 in prize money and £0 spent on referees.

I refused to referee for free at this event with large cash prizes. It was the most enjoyable day I have spent at a (non-World Cup) tournament since I left Canada in 2006. Fencing. Watching my next opponent. Supporting my clubmates. I had not had a day like it in a long, long time. And I had missed being able to simply enjoy the atmosphere of a fencing tournament.

And I realized something – I don’t enjoy refereeing. Not enough to make it worthwhile.

If I’m waking up at 5 am, getting home at 10 pm, exhausting myself with exercise, spending money on trains, taxis, entry fees, fencing kit and (often) hotels, I want to enjoy that whole experience. And I enjoy it when I’m fencing, and spending time with (and supporting) my clubmates.

I do not enjoy it when every moment between bouts is spent refereeing. And if I’m spending money to attend the tournament — to spend time away from my daughter, to take a break, to have some recreation — I’m damned well going to make the most of it, and try to enjoy the experience.

So the Norfolk Open asked me if I would referee. They would cover expenses, they say. These would be mine:

• Transport: Approximately £26.
• Entry Fee: £17
• Breakfast: £5
• Dinner: £15

That’s £63. But it doesn’t take into account that it ruined my day of fencing, so they owe me another one of those, of approximately the same quality … £126. Which is probably not the amount they have in mind. And that’s assuming I’d “do it for free”.

Which is the second problem with refereeing in Britain. British Fencing policy is that referees are not paid; they are merely reimbursed their expenses. As a referee, you will always be somewhat overworked, but the amazingly small size of the British refereeing corps makes that even more so.

So I have a refereeing policy, which I will adhere to from now on:

I will not referee if I am fencing at a tournament. It is not why I’m there. I accept that some amount of refereeing is unavoidable, if the fencing tournament is to run at all, but I believe that by refereeing for free I am contributing to the problem, rather than the solution.

Hence, I will purposely avoid refereeing as a fencer. I will only referee if hired as a referee.

And in that case, my fees are 1 month of my fencing club fees (currently £90) plus expenses. The idea being that if I referee a tournament every month, it ought to cover my club fees.

What I can guarantee is that I am not paying upwards of £60 on the weekend to work my ass off so other people can enjoy their hobby while I’m not enjoying mine. I can save my money and have more enjoyable days in my garden.

Fancy hat available for sale here.

For a while now — since before Backpacking Dad pointed out to me that I will no longer have time for it last week — I have been pondering what to do about fencing next year.

Clearly, my ideal participation level — practicing three times a week and attending a tournament once a month — is out. Come October, there will simply not be time for it. But I very much enjoy this game, in which you try to tag your opponent with a spring-loaded metal stick, so making time for it is paramount.

Heading into the British National Championships, I was contemplating playing a bigger role on the sidelines — rather than competing and training, I would endeavour to contribute through refereeing and maybe volunteering some of my time with British Fencing.

However, my experience at the Nationals soured me on this idea. In order to contribute to the well-being of British Fencing, it seems that one must put a lot into the relationship and expect to get nothing out of it. But I have no prior relationship with British Fencing to make this unbalanced relationship seem worthwhile — I just do not care. I have tried to list what British Fencing does — or has done — for me.

The results do not look impressive:

1: They provide insurance, as part of the membership. But I do not spend time volunteering for any of the other insurance companies that cover me, so that means little. Also, I have never had cause to make a claim upon the insurance policy.

2: They provide training for referees who referee domestic competitions. I am trying not to laugh, really. Really. If you aren’t laughing yourself, you clearly do not fence domestic British competitions.

3: They provide training for coaches. But not my coach, who is Polish, and not trained through the British system.

4: They organise tournaments, like the National Championships. I am unable to attend these, as a competitor, as I am not a citizen of the UK.

In total, British Fencing does very little for me, and I do not feel the same attachment as I would for the Canadian Fencing Federation or Ontario Fencing Association back home — those organisations played a large role in my development as a fencer, coach and referee. I do not get the same enjoyment helping British Fencing as I do from playing, nor as much as I might from supporting one of the organisations that helped me.

Unless I am to be compensated for my time, I can see little reason to contribute my time to fencing in that manner. This leads my plans away from the sidelines, and back behind the mask.

I will fence next year.

My goals are very small: to attend practice at least once a month, and to compete in three tournaments over the course of the fencing season. Of course, this means I will not actually be joining a fencing club — I will be attending sufficiently rarely that simply paying drop fees will be more economic.

But it will keep me in the sport for the coming year.

And in future years? Who knows — my daughter might turn out to be a fencer, and the impetus to sacrifice my time for the sport might appear.

Image by Alan Chia, available under CC License

This past weekend I attended my first British National Championship. Not as a competitor — I am not, after all, a British national — but as a referee.

I had some trepidations about this. British Fencing does not pay referees (other than expenses), a money-saving move which — in this blogger’s opinion — hurts the quality of the sport in the country a great deal, and results in many potential strong referees deciding not to referee. This in fact happened during this year’s championships, with most British sabre referees competing, but I digress. The refusal to pay referees is a big part of the reason why I had not previously refereed a British Fencing-run event. That I like the sport and am generally happy to referee does not mean that I want to do so for free.

However, a few compelling reasons had pushed me towards attending.

First, I had not been to a competition in any capacity since October. This is simply too long. British competitions suffer from a couple of problems — they are overcrowded and under-refereed — which make it rather easy to find an excuse to be absent. But I missed simply being at a fencing competition and very much wanted to go.

Second, I thought it would be a good development opportunity. British men’s foil is as good as you will find anywhere, so the quality of the fencing would be excellent, and with the top British referees in attendance, I hoped that I would find some opportunity to improve as a referee.

Finally, I looked forward to the times at the end of the day after I had been dismissed as a referee — as a first-timer at the Nationals and without an FIE license, I was sure to have a relatively early end to my days. I could then cheer on my clubmates and take photographs.

Instead, I found myself being used the entire day. The pre-tournament meeting was at 8:40 in the morning. I refereed a woman’s foil semi-final around 6:00 in the afternoon — by that point, all my clubmates had been eliminated. And I was standing beside a piste as an assesseur at 9:15 in the evening when the final hit of the day was scored.

All in all, on Saturday, I worked a twelve-and-a-half hour day. For free. With all the various stresses that come with being a referee. On Sunday, I had a little bit of a reprieve due to an early train time and a competition that was running behind schedule, and was free after the men’s foil quarterfinals.

With two of my club’s teams still in the action, and forty-five minutes before I had to catch a cab to the train station, it gave me a few minutes to watch the end of a woman’s foil semi-final, and the start of a men’s foil semi-final, with friends and clubmates competing.

And I realised that this was what I wanted when I agreed to come and referee. To spend time with these people, to cheer them on — even if I was not actually competing with them. The free train ticket and hotel room provided by British Fencing to referees had proved a strong lure.

My Saturday was awful. I was exhausted, over-warm in my suit on a July team in a room full of sweaty fencers, unpaid, and I did not get to watch more than one bout by my clubmates. I took three photographs. Sunday was only marginally improved, and only because I had to leave early.

It is not what I wanted. And while I was hardly the most abused official of the day — others had tougher schedules, and had to deal with more problematic fencers and coaches than I did — it is not something that I think I will do again. There is just too much of a gap between what I put into it and what I got out of it.

And that’s sad.

Anybody who participates in the sport of fencing should read the rulebook, and keep abreast of rules changes. Those who referee fencing bouts, in particular, should ensure that they read the rulebook on a regular basis.

I will be putting on my referee hat this coming weekend at the British National Championships — for the first time since October — and am spending time this week ensuring I am up to date with the rules.

Fencing rules come in three distinct flavours. There is the actual rulebook, available in the original French and in its official English translation. A second flavour consists of official letters, which can (but most often do not) make alterations to the rules mid-season.

The third (and final) flavour concerns official interpretations and points of emphasis, about which I cannot do much from home. Staying up to date regarding these requires regular attendance at competitions and correspondence with referees, rather than the lax approach to fencing I have adopted over the past two years.

Beyond these three aspects of knowing the rules, a referee also needs to know the local exceptions to the rules. Most of these tend to be in regards to the safety equipment — due to the expense of fencing kit, most national governing bodies have decided that they will allow protective gear of a lower quality than required at the international level.

While part of me is always taken aback by this — we are talking about safety, after all — it also makes sense. Equipment rated CE2 (meaning it meets the international requirements) is approximately twice the cost of that rated CE1 (a lower standard), and it is far from clear that the lower standards result in a higher rate of serious injury. That lower cost means a lower barrier to entering the sport, and more participants.

National governing bodies –and many individuals in the fencing world — like having more participants.

The British rule exceptions are pretty straightforward here for the most part — a mix of CE1 and CE2 equipment requirements, rather than CE2 across the board. Then there are masks.

Some years ago — against the recommendation of their own medical commission — the international body responsible for fencing (the FIE) decided to introduce new requirements for masks, by adding transparent visiors to the mask as a requirement to compete at the highest level. For the first time (to my knowledge) there was a change in safety gear to make it arguably less safe, for the sake of television ratings.

Consequently, many people were saying “I told you so” when, late last year, the use of such masks was suspended after an incident:

The FIE has been informed that on 1st November 2009 a foil blade pierced through the transparent visor of a mask during the Junior/Cadet European Championships in Odense (DEN).

After investigation, a mid-season rule change was made:

to suspend and forbid, until further notice, the use of the transparent visor mask both in foil and epee, at all FIE official competitions.

Every national federation we are aware of at the Big Bad Blog followed suit with a similar ban, save one. The British. Instead, the British rule reads as follows:

All use of foil and épée transparent masks where the transparent visor consists of only one layer of transparent material is suspended until further notice.

Foil and épée transparent masks with visors fitted with two layers of transparent material (a main layer and an outer ‘scratch layer’) may continue to be used, as may all transparent masks at sabre. Only the mask manufacturer’s own outer scratch layer may be used. For the elimination of doubt, this includes fitted when new and retro-fit outer layers.

It should be noted that only one company in the world sells a scratch layer for their visors. And that happens to be Leon Paul, the only British-based manufacturer of fencing equipment and a sponsor for British Fencing.

This essentially amounts to a decision that, for this class of masks, only those of their sponsor are permitted in competition. It also means that Great Britain might be the only place in the world that allows these masks in foil and epee competitions.

While we won’t claim to be experts on the safety of polycarbonate visors here at the Big Bad Blog, it’s hard not to be troubled by the apparent conflict-of-interest that exists in this case. Though I have grown accustomed to the conflict of interest that pits safety against ease of access to the sport, I cannot help but find this conflict of interest a little bit less comfortable, and harder to support.