Referee setup: assigning, publishing and restoring referees on matches

In handball tournaments, the second referee role is presented as "Main referee 1" instead of "Assistant referee 1". This is a display difference only — the underlying slot and everything about how it is assigned, published, undone and restored works exactly the same as any other role.

No other sport changes how the referee setup works; the rest of this page applies the same way everywhere.

The referee setup is the referee view of a tournament's match list. It shows every match with one column per referee role, and lets an administrator fill those columns, publish them to the referees, and correct mistakes afterwards.

You reach it from the match list of a single tournament or league season. A referee-only administrator lands directly on the referee columns; a full tournament administrator switches into the referee view from the same list. The extra referee tools sit in the Shortcuts menu above the table (it is called Referee functions when you are in referee-editing mode).

Access is granted per tournament, not globally. Anyone with tournament administration, match editing or referee administration rights for that tournament can edit the setup. Without those rights, the page is read-only, and it is hidden entirely if the tournament has chosen to hide its matches.

Everything on this page applies to one tournament or one league season at a time. The federation-level screen where a federation appoints referees across a whole series is a separate system with its own data, and is not covered here — see League referee appointment.

Each match has a fixed set of referee roles: main referee, assistant referee 1, assistant referee 2, fourth referee and supervisor.

One match plus one role is a slot. A slot holds at most one appointment, and the whole system — assignment, undo, history, restore — works slot by slot. That is why undoing one action never disturbs a role or a match that action did not touch.

A slot does not have to hold a named person. It can also hold:

• a team, when teams referee each other's matches (switch on "Use teams as referees" above the table),
• a placeholder for a group position, for example "Group A/3", so the referee is decided when the group table is final,
• a placeholder for the winner or loser of another match, for example "Winner 214".

Placeholders resolve to a real team as the tournament progresses. In the history and in the undo dialogs, a placeholder is shown with the same text you see in the table.

Role names can vary by sport — see Differences per sport below.

There are two ways to assign referees to one or more matches, and you can mix them: the graphical match area above the table, where matches are shown as boxes, and the match table. The graphical area only lets you assign: pick the role and the referee, select several matches by Ctrl-clicking their boxes, then click Set referee (or Set team). Removing referees is done from the table, which has the full set of actions.

Select matches in the table, then use the referee actions:

• Assign a referee — put one person into the chosen role on all selected matches.
• Assign a team — put a team into the chosen role on all selected matches.
• Referee partner — assign a fixed pair: pick a main referee and a partner, and the partner is placed in the second role on every match the main referee already has. If another assistant referee is already appointed on one of those matches, the partner replaces them.
• Remove referees — clear the chosen role on the selected matches.
• Import from Excel — upload a file that assigns or clears referees in bulk.

Every one of these actions is a bulk action: it writes to many matches at once, and it always saves a version of the setup first, so it can be undone.

If several administrators have the match list open at the same time, their tables update live as changes are saved, including changes made by a restore.

A new assignment is not published by default. An unpublished assignment is a draft: the referee does not see it and is not notified, so you can build a full round before anyone hears about it. The table marks these with a "Not published" tag.

Use Publish on the selected matches when the setup is ready, and Unpublish to take an assignment back to draft. Referees can confirm a published assignment themselves; a confirmed assignment is marked "Confirmed by referee".

Whether referees actually receive an email or push message when they are given or lose a match is a per-tournament setting ("Notify referees about the referee setup") in the notification settings on the same match list. When it is off, publishing changes only what the referee can see when they log in. Notifications are only sent for matches that have not started yet, and you can review what went out in the Notification log in the same menu.

Beyond these referee setup notifications, referees receive automatic messages in only two other cases: a confirmation email when they register their interest in refereeing the tournament, and a message when the organiser confirms that the referee is wanted, which has its own setting.

Every successful bulk referee action shows a success message with an Undo button.

Undo asks for confirmation first and tells you exactly what it will do, for example "adds 4, removes 12 and changes 3 referee assignments". The dialog has a Notify referees about the changes checkbox, switched off by default: leave it off to fix a mistake quietly, switch it on if the referees already act on the wrong setup.

Undo only touches the matches and the role that the action itself wrote to. If a colleague assigned other matches in the meantime, their work is left alone.

The Undo button stops working once someone makes another manual change to the referee setup of that tournament. You then get a message telling you to use the referee setup history instead. Automatic hourly versions in between do not block it.

A separate Undo bulk change action in the same menu rolls back bulk schedule changes (dates, times, venues) from the last 7 days, and can optionally re-publish the referee assignments it brings back. That is about the match schedule, not about who referees.

Shortcuts → Referee setup history opens a page that keeps the last 30 days of the tournament's referee setup.

The left column lists versions, newest first. Each entry shows the time, who caused it, why ("Before assigning Ola Nordmann to 12 matches"), and three badges: how many assignments were added, removed and changed compared with the version before it. Versions saved automatically by the hourly job are dimmed and shown as "Automatic".

Pick a version and the right side compares it against the setup as it is right now: one row per differing slot, with match number, date, teams, role, who holds the slot now, and who held it in this version. Colours mark whether the older version would put an assignment back (green), remove one (red) or change it (yellow). "Not published" and "Confirmed by referee" tags are shown on both sides so you can see what you would disturb.

Filters by date, role and referee narrow the list. Very large differences are capped at the first 500 rows on screen — filter to see the rest — but Restore all still covers every difference, not just the visible ones.

Restore all puts the whole version back. Tick individual rows and use Restore selected to put back only those. Both go through a confirmation dialog with the counts and the same optional "Notify referees" checkbox.

A restore is itself saved as a version first, so the success message offers an Undo and you can always step back.

A restore replaces the referee setup only on the slots that actually differ. Matches and roles that already match the chosen version are not rewritten, and nothing else about the match — result, venue, time — is affected.

Some rows are deliberately skipped, and the success message names the match numbers it skipped:

• the match no longer exists in the tournament,
• the referee is no longer in the tournament's referee list, or the identity behind that entry has since been given to a different person.

Restored assignments keep the published or unpublished state they had in that version, including the "confirmed by referee" state. Whether a referee was marked as a no-show, and which team was registered on the assignment, are restored as well.

If you tick "Notify referees", only real changes of person are announced: the referee who loses the match is told it was removed, the referee who gets it is told about the match. Assignments that only change from published to unpublished, or the other way, do not trigger a message. Notifications still respect the tournament's referee notification setting and are never sent for matches that have already started.

Versions older than 30 days are deleted, so the history is a safety net for recent mistakes, not an audit archive.