An evaluation of the visual skills of the top rugby referees in South Africa

Abstract: Optometric interest in the vision of athletes has led to the development of a distinct professional sub-division usually termed sports vision. The basic premise of sports vision is that eyes feed information to the brain, which interprets the data and then sets muscles into a coordinated motion. When the eyes’ messages are inaccurate or incomplete, performance may suffer Sports vision therefore encompasses performance oriented comprehensive vision care programs involving education, evaluation, correction, protection and enhancement of the athlete. This also true for referees officiating in many open skill sports.The study will endeavour to find an objective and reliable way to evaluate visual motor performance in rugby referees. In this study, a battery of fourteen (14) vision related procedures will be performed on the 27 top rugby referees in South Africa as requested by SARU. The procedures will be divided into hardware and software visual skills. Using existing protocols, a comparison with existing norms is made with the emphasis on the visual skills related to decision making. Separate standardised norms will also be developed for this referee population according to the performance of their visual skills. Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of research interest in cognitive sport psychology or the scientific study of mental processes in sports performers. This welcome trend is evident in the abundance of recent studies on cognitive processes such as anticipation or the ability to select from many available cues to predict what is yet to occur and attention, focus and concentration to ensure consistent accurate performance and avoid distraction. Decision making is therefore the ability to make the best choice between a set of alternatives. The ability to make effective decisions is critical for rugby referees and draws on all forms of perceptual and cognitive skills available. This study showed that overall performance of rugby referees visual skills was reduced and below par and highlighted that certain visual skills are more important than others, in this case visualization and central peripheral awareness were deemed to be the two most important skills that affect overall refereeing performance...M.Phil. (Optometry