A season in review: the table that nearly did not meet
The last season ended with a final that almost failed to take place. Donna Fraser, who referees our season play, explains how it was saved by a rest week and a great deal of patience.
Why did the final almost not happen?
I have refereed a number of seasons at OCE Guild, and the last was the first in which I thought the final might not take place at all. Two of the four players at the leading table were due on site for a fortnight, and a third was recovering from a long illness. On paper, the table could not meet.
It met nonetheless, and the reason is worth setting down, because it concerns the way we have chosen to arrange our seasons. Every season contains a rest week, and every fixture may be moved by a few days. Those two provisions, which cost nothing, carried a table to its final session intact.
What the season taught me
Absence is ordinary
In Mandurah, absence is part of life. People are on site, on leave, in hospital or simply tired. A competition that treats absence as misconduct will lose its best players, and a competition that treats it as ordinary will keep them. We have settled on the second approach, and the final bears it out.
The referee should be quiet
During the final I said almost nothing. The players raised no disputes and asked for no rulings, which is the finest compliment a referee can receive. My notes for the evening consist of one line recording the result and another recording that the tea was good.
A room that holds its breath
The last round was played in a silence I have rarely heard in the house. Some forty members stood or sat around the table without a word, and when the last move was made the applause lasted for a full minute. Nobody had been told to applaud. Nobody had to be.
The honour
The winners' names are now in the book of seasons, in the green ink that the editor reserves for finals. They will choose the opening game of the next season, and I understand from a reliable source that they are deliberating with considerable seriousness.