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Eddie Pearson
Award - 1992
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Robert was one of the first group of
instructors trained in the session with Ken Aston in Canada in
the early seventies. Then Evans became a Regional Referee
Instructor, training others in the first round of clinics given
in the United States in the next few years.
His principal and
chosen task for the next few years was to prepare instructional
material at a high level, stuff that other instructors could use
to elevate referees to a level approaching professionalism.
Evans wrote pieces on offside interpretation, prepared sets of
slides on fouls, wrote instructions for assessors, a handbook
for linesmen, sets of overheads on many themes for presentation
to referees: advantage, setting the tone for the game, the
spirit of the law, how to do the perfect game, and so on. In the
meantime he was refereeing in the NASL. Also Robert started the
first-ever Journal for Referee Instructors, but it died for lack
of funds.
Evans ranking as
a referee improved, until the late seventies he was appointed to
the international panel, on which he stayed for more than eight
years. By the middle to late eighties he was one of the senior
referees and instructors in the country, and after retiring from
the FIFA list Evans was appointed National Director of Referee
Instruction. In that role Evans was determined to raise the
standards for national referees across the country.
Evans traveled
all over the place preaching the message of high standards,
using a grant from the Olympic Foundation, teaching one method
of interpretation and behavior for all referees. He made sets of
slides standardizing the interpretation of offside nationwide,
an interpretation that one or two other countries were also
using, and now adopted worldwide. Taking Bob Sumpter's idea for
a single training camp, he started the national testing, which
continues to this day. Evans set high standards, demanding that
referees raise their level of professionalism. After much
grumbling, it began to work, until a few years later, under
pressure from the political side of the game, we abandoned those
standards. A few years later, after a dispute with the referees'
committee and the USSF administration over the unethical conduct
of a highly-ranked referee, he resigned as NDRI, but was shortly
afterwards appointed the first US FIFA Instructor.
Since then, Evans
have been far less active, even after he was vindicated over the
ethics issue, but still continue to teach and assess where
required. |
