To: Referees Date 6/9/90 (Updated 25/11/2015)
From: Charlie Orton

Subject: Judging Positions

1. Get to know the setters.

The setters are the crux of the basic receive line-up and switching manoeuvres. Hence they are likely to be involved in any fault. It is very advantageous to know the player opposite the setter in a 'one setter' system.

This can easily be done during the warm up, especially the 'over the net' session.

By watching the setter and his opposite (in the rotation) it is usually possible to quickly determine the line up, especially in local league and lower divisions of our National League.

Common faults are: -

1. Back court setter in front of his front court partner;
2. Back court setter at 6 crossing over with deep lying player at 1.

[N.B. In all diagrams the setter is underlined.]

2. Add part of the rotation.

As receive line-ups get more complex it is useful to have more information than where the setter is. This is really only necessary when teams start developing tactics for reception and the subsequent attack. At this level the line-up places emphasis, not on getting the setter to 2, but rather on using the best receivers and preparing for attack.

My usual ploy is to remember the player in front of the setter in the rotation. I do this for a simple reason; this is the player that the setter, when at the front, is trying to get past immediately after service, and hence their relative position is the one most likely to be at fault.

It is unusual at this level to be watching for the player moving just before the service, in fact a fault is more likely to occur on the 2nd service receive in any position as the players carefully position themselves for the 1st service receive. The fault comes when the setter does not move back far enough from position 2 where he has been playing during the rally.

Common faults are: -

1. Setter at 5 standing behind the player at 3 but in front of the player at 4.
2. Setter at 4 standing at 3, or setter at 3 standing at 2.

3. Cross relate the two teams

Neither of the above tactics will help when a team gets one whole position out of rotation. Ok, it should be picked up when they next come to serve, but if they are out of rotation they should not win the rally!

The trick I use to overcome this problem is to match the two main setters of the opposing teams (or one of their opposites). By this I mean that you will find that setter of team A is in the same position (rotationally) as the setter of team B when A (or B) is serving. Just occasionally (and I blame the coaches for its lack of occurrence), they are never together. However, in that case you can remember that setter A is chasing setter B or vice-versa.

When you have established this method of monitoring, a quick look at the serving line-up will tell you the receiving line up, and if that doesn't match with what's on court, start looking for the fault.
Common faults: -

1. One team rotated too often or forgetting they had rotated, served and missed. Or a setter too eager to get on has rotated himself from 5 to 4.
2. Setter making a dummy or real penetration and then playing an attack shot. The fault can equally be ours here, when we blow a legal attack, or allow a front court attack, which is from a back court player..

4. Know the rotations

Most volleyball people know the simple rotations that go along with a penetrating setter. However there are many others in use from the extremes of Leeds Ladies many years ago to the simple but confusing systems of Malory.

Referees must learn what the coach is doing, whether just trying to confuse (always ask a coach if he's trying it on the opposition), keeping a poor receiver away from the service reception or just getting their 2 best receivers to take the service.

So study the positions, talk to the coaches, write them down and look at then again later. Here are some examples: -

5. A real life example

how a team were positioned on court.

It is difficult to see the actual positions in the rotation from this.
Even knowing that the setter is player No. 5 and the opposite is No. 11, does not really help.

It would be possible to consider the back row to be in order of position (1,6,5) 10,11,22.
That would indicate a positional fault with 11 & 22 switched or 5 & 8 switched.
My system of memorising the two players either side of the setter and the opposite, gave me 10,5,22 opposite 11, told me a different story.

Player 22 was at 3 which meant player 8 was at 6, so the positional fault was player at 6 (No.8) in front of the player at 3 (No 22).

Actual line up.

In this case the 2nd referee did notice there was a fault, and mistakenly called players 5 & 8 switching, which was overruled by the 1st referee.
The game continued with this position for a number of points, and the coach called a time out but still did not correct his positioning.
The serving team was happily exploiting the lack of a receiver in Zone 3.

What a difference it would have made if the officials had called the actual positional fault, and brought player 22 forward into zone 3 and moved number 8 to zone 6.

6. Other tricks

One method of find faults, (which is really not consistent with my philosophy of refereeing) is to note which players are having to correct their position just before the service, and keep a beedy eye on them.

This is 'looking for faults' and is not in the right spirit, call them up once to help them learn, but I doubt if they get much from it.

Another useful ploy, which can be used with idea (1) is counting players sideways. Let me explain; you are watching the two opposite in the rotation, if you count the players to the left of the right-hand most one of these two, (and vice-versa) you must find at least 2 other players. Check it out if you don't believe me. However be warned with this one, it tells you that there is a positional fault, but not who is at fault - you can have a sticky time explaining what is wrong after you've blown your whistle. Nevertheless I use it 3 or 4 times a season with a line-up that looks wrong somehow.

Common Faults: -

1. Back court player who doesn't receive service, staying in their playing position after a rally and as they don't have a receive position to move into.
2. Outside hitter at position 2, staying at 4 after a rally.

Finally, don't rush to put these ideas into practise, and find yourself blowing the whistle too often. It's easily done!

Try the memorising, learn the rotations, check out my ideas, work through the methods in games you manage to watch. If you're not sure, wait for the next service - it is better that you miss a fault only another referee would see, rather than you blow for a fault that isn't there!