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WSO Issues Update On Dessouky Conduct Game
Yesterday, with the scores at 8-8 in game five in the third round match of the 2024 CIB Egyptian Open between Fares Dessouky and Tarek Momen, a conduct game was awarded against Dessouky for repeated attempts to influence the referee’s decision.
To find out more about the situation, we spoke to head of World Squash Officiating (WSO) Lee Drew.
Lee, can you talk us through what happened in the match between Fares Dessouky and Tarek Momen yesterday?
Yesterday’s match was very hotly contested between Fares Dessouky and Tarek Momen with a lot going on and a lot of management that was happening around the decisions that the match referee was giving.
When you look at the situations, both players received conduct warnings for dissent [Rule 15.6.5].
Dissent includes influencing or attempting to influence the referee. Fares Dessouky had also received a conduct stroke for the same infringement.
For both players, it’s important to realise that both players were given opportunities to voice their opinion and the referee had attempted to listen to give them opportunities to communicate without having to go down the code of conduct route.
On repeated occasions and with one of them already being on a conduct warning and one of them being on the conduct stroke, it got to the point where it was a repeated offence and a referee is allowed to escalate the code of conduct as they deem fit for a situation. In this situation, the referee felt that given what had gone and what had been allowed that a conduct game was correct in that situation.
And what is the dissent rule that was broken?
There’s dissent after a decision, so challenging a referee’s decision was part of it, so discussing it, debating it, questioning it.
Of course, it’s absolutely fine for someone to ask for an explanation or rationale, but once the decision has been given and the rationale has been given you then move on and you accept that decision because the referee is the person that’s managing the match.
The other side of it is the influencing of the referee, which could be hand signals to signal what they think the decision should be, but also shouting ‘that’s a stroke, that’s a stroke’ or ‘that should be a no-let’, ‘no-way’ those sorts of comments.
So any kind of comment that’s deemed to influence the referee prior to the referee giving the decision.
When you look at the situation in isolation and what was happening, it was build up of dissent and influence in the referee. Conduct warnings were given and both players were given opportunities to actually be able to do it. Rightly or wrongly, there was actually some leeway given by the referee: One player had already received a conduct stroke and then once it got to the point where the referee felt that it was unacceptable, the referee escalated it to conduct game.
These are directives that WSO has highlighted. What I would emphasise is that they’re not rule changes. These things are in the rules and they’ve always been in the rules and it’s about bringing it to the attention to address situations that are occurring as part of the game of squash and that the rules say shouldn’t be occurring.
Find out more about the rues of squash at worldsquashofficiating.com.
