2015 Kanga Cup - Saturday only 7 hours to go!!!!

Hey everyone,

Been a while since I visited the blogging world, busy with life I guess.  But as they say "we're back baby" for a bigger and better KangaCup 2015 or #KangaCup25 (it's the 25th occasion of Kanga Cup), so I'm trying to attempt to get it trending this week.

Busy day as always and it's already late, so just a few shoutouts of significance for those playing along at home

Everyone arrived safe, with referees from New Zealand taking the scenic route via Melbourne - pictures to follow when Smithy gives them to me in the morning

Longest traveled referee goes to Oskar, from Hong Kong via William Lai, coaching alumni and regular "visitor" on Grand Final Friday.  Rumor has it William will make an appearance on Thursday - your coaching sheets are ready William and we expect minimum of 10 before lunch completed please... Oskar is the first international referee back to the tournament in several years and seems to be fitting in already, so Welcome.
Bonus points for anyone who can name the last international (NZers don't count) referee.

A visit and tour to the Australia War Memorial before dinner, some fun icebreakers at the AIS involving skittles and Post-it notes (bill in your tray Alasdair) then back for the obligatory and now traditional 2014 in Review video - Lots of photobombing in 2014 by a cast member of the upcoming Mary Poppings and references to coffee consumption, plus the sound was double speed so it was the House version. I'll post when I've fixed the spelling errors, thanks David

Pictures on Flickr as normal, thanks to Scott Ferguson www.ausref.com for continued support of a photographic archive of Kanga Cup referees going back 11 years, unprecedented in youth tournament history.

Tomorrow we get to catch up with old friends from Capital Football and make new ones at the annual seminar, technical training (I'm running some sort of chasing the ball thing???), some shopping opportunities then onto the opening ceremony at the Stadium - I hope to live stream the event via Periscope whilst my hotspot lasts, so join us sometime after 3pm for all the action.  First time trying it, so I believe you can watch via a web browser  live if you don't have the app or download the app and join the conversation.  Follow me on the Twitter link @KangaCupRef

Guest speaker to be confirmed, details tomorrow.

Excited to be back and it's looking to be another great, if not cold week here in Canberra.

39 referees, 8 interstate / international coaches, 2 Capital Football coaches, 1 Capital Football Logistics guru all tucked up asleep - as am I in 10 minutes.

Might get up early and watch the Womens World Cup 3rd playoff at 6am - go England

KCRYA14 - All photos now online / Reviewing your performance

Evening everyone,

Well I've spent a productive afternoon indoors (no football for me this Sunday??) finalizing the uploading of Day 4 - Day 5 - Presentations photos to the Flickr account.

If you search for your first name and / or finals game "U/14MPlate" and select Your Photostream as shown below

you'll find pictures of your games, awards ceremony and perhaps random pictures tagged with you or your final game.

Over 1900 pictures online (new record for KCRYA) and I'm still waiting on pictures from NZ and Lynda for completeness (hint hint Paul, Brent).

I'm working on reviewing the video footage shot (mostly of Sunday's technical sessions and Sun - Wed's technical sessions).  At this stage I'm looking at uploading that footage onto a DropBox account for closed distribution but will have to work out the details yet as it's a lot of downloading to view it all (currently 37Gb).  If anyone has better ideas, love to hear some feedback.

I'll also be using the dropbox service to provide footage from past Kanga Cup technical sessions as soon as I can edit it down.  More details in a post later this week.

Reviewing / Goal Setting

How was your first full weekend back post KCRYA?  Any improvements?  New found confidence on your local leagues after refereeing in the hot house of Kanga?  Are you reviewing your performance game to game for areas of improvement?  Have you set new short term / medium / long term goals for your refereeing career?

Your Academy book had some brief reviewing sheets to help you in this regard, but you may have filled them all in.
Here's a possible template to start with.
Jim Ouliaris, formerly FIFA AR, current member of FFA/FFV Referees Technical Committee, FFV's Referee Standing Committee, and AFC/FFA Assessor / Instructor and back in 2012 was FFV's Talent Officials Program Manager.  Jim created along with help from Chris Bambridge, Ian Postlethwaite, Luke Brennan, Carlo Graser, Hakan Anaz, Kevin Dockerty (a stellar range of FFV's top refereeing minds) a range of documents you can still find on the internet and are still relevant today.  Here's Jim's Top Session 2 that covers topics including Unwritten Rules, SMART goal setting, LOTG Q&A, and a short quiz.  Give it a try, see how you go and the unwritten rules are especially interesting reading.
Used with thanks to Jim and the FFV crew.

Gossip from around the Grounds

Post Kanga lag for some of the Qld crew - Lynda has spent most of the week recovering from a cold, missed training but was back out assessing today.  Can't keep a good assessor down long, made of tough stuff up North.

Darren went straight back into the deep end of Football Brisbane's Capital 4 on Saturday afternoon (well someone had to do it!!) and promptly sent off two and cautioned half a dozen, keeping up the hard line spirit of Kanga Cup and not taking any nonsense.  He had a good night's sleep and promptly returned to the airport on Sunday for a few days in Melbourne.


Bit of a step up from this 3 days earlier

Tuesday's training was full of questions from KCRYA Alumni about how good/bad it was. Bit of jealously I felt about our AIS setup I think compared to years past - LOL

I caught up briefly with Oliver at Monday night's junior coaching on the Southside.  Otherwise it's back to normal.  I managed to have two quiet games (Sunday after, just a single RC for VC) and yesterday Capital 2 Ressies was a walk over 9-1, but was a fun training run working my angles. Already working on the annual report, did some correspondence with the KCRYA coaches and spent the rest of this week sorting out my Uni life for Semester 2.



CF - Delfina Dimoski (presenter on Sunday night)

had a big weekend being appointed to ACT NPL U/20's CR for first time.  There is speculation she's aiming on making a big play for Kanga Cup U/12's Plate Grand Final in 2015, so you can follow her progress on Twitter @DelfinaDimoski

Alasdair - MIA somewhere last seen in the FNQ area after missed flights and another long day on Saturday (LOL).

No word from NZ crew, but lots of FB updates indicating everyone got back.

If you managed to get some local publicity for your attendance, send me the link.  Remember, internal promotion of your time at KCRYA within your branch / region could be via your monthly newsletter / publicly speaking at your next coaching meeting - ask your Branch coach / mentor about it.

Anyway, time to get onto something else. Enjoy the photos and don't exceed your parents internet limit.

REMINDER: Visit http://www.ausref.com/index.php/shop for your all refereeing needs with your KCRYA exclusive discount code only valid until the end of July.  Thanks to Scotty for the Flickr site maintenance.

Until next time.

KangaCupRef

Thursday Morning - First update

Well it's just after midnight and I'm finally uploading some photos from the first three days and looking at blog traffic and wondering where did the time go again.  Finals panel meeting concluded quickly, perhaps a record 2 hours and done onsite here at the amazing AIS residential facilities. Excellent food, accommodation that works with big meeting areas (including a TV lounge for tonight's Wednesday meltdown meeting), two per room and free internet (using my own to update you all tonight).  Hope we can get back here next year - I attended the recovery pool session tonight and it's just great to be able to walk there and back in 10 minutes and recover - had a big game today in the rain when we ran out of uninjured referees, 4YC and lots of fun, but was feeling a little sore tonight.

The assessment spreadsheet development over the past 12 months has meant that the referees are ranked quickly and appointments are done without much fuss, atleast from the coaches end.  David Rowell the appointments officer for the last few years will be up until the small hours putting all the semi finals together, along with the regular final round games and consolation games for Thursday, kicking off in about 8 hours.  Big job, good luck tonight mate....

Anyway, there's a bunch of photos going onto the flickr account overnight from Sat / Sun and some of Monday - still chasing other coaches for pics and will update more Thursday afternoon.  My big plan to provide a local access hot spot took most of the week to sort out - technology is a wonderful but painful thing sometimes, so it's back to using up your data plan if you want to view them in the next few days before the end on Friday - Free internet here may help that..

More gossip and insights into the week that is almost over later....

KangaCupRef