Between the lines: Players’ preoccupations when communicating with sports officials

Skilled monitoring of player behaviour, using varied communication styles and reflexivity in interactions are linked to expertise in sports officials. However, insight into interaction dynamics between players and officials is limited, particularly from the players’ perspective. A situated player perspective challenges assumptions that players primarily rely on stable social cues about officials. To address this, video-led self-confrontation interviews were conducted with six semi-professional rugby team captains (Mage = 24.8 years; Mexp = 2.5 years) post-match to explore their unfolding, lived experiences and identify salient cues and preoccupations guiding their interactions with the central referee. A micro-phenomenological approach was used to access the pre-reflexive dimension of experience, capturing aspects of interaction not typically documented. An abductive, iterative analysis further supported interpretation by considering generative mechanisms shaping captains’ preoccupations. Three common preoccupations emerged: (a) making sense of the referee’s priorities based on ongoing match events; (b) attempting to influence the referee’s perception of future events when inconsistent with the captain’s own perception and (c) enacting captaincy status to negotiate influence or assert role claims when perceived as violated or strategically useful. Findings show that captains’ communication with referees is guided by spontaneously emerging cues and concerns, illustrating that interaction is an emergent, relational process co-constructed with players. These results demonstrate how understanding players’ situated perspectives could enhance officiating training by improving officials’ ability to respond to unfolding match dynamics and suggest that micro-phenomenological methods can provide unique insights into the pre-reflexive dimensions of high-stakes, fast-paced interactions.