International Medieval Combat Federation
The Democratic Federation of National Associations

Handling a Referee Warning in the List Without Losing Your Head

Every fighter who has stepped into a tournament list remembers the moment a flag goes up. One second you are in the flow of a five-on-five scrum, the next you hear the marshal's whistle and a coloured rag rises against your opponent's shoulder. Your pulse spikes, the crowd noise around the arena seems to dip, and a small voice in your helmet asks whether the call was for you or for the other bloke. That moment matters. How you respond to a referee warning during a bout often decides whether the round ends well or unravels into a string of penalties that ends your day early.

Most Australian fighters train year-round for the IMCF World Championships, national qualifiers held in places like Sydney's Olympic Park or at shows down in Geelong, and a handful of regional opens that pop up around the country each summer. Refereeing under IMCF rules is strict but consistent, and the same five-or-so flag colours mean the same things whether you are fighting in Hobart or on the European circuit. Knowing what the colours mean, and what your body is doing while your brain processes them, is half the battle before you ever spar with a partner.

Why referees raise a flag in the first place

Referees do not flag fighters because they dislike anyone personally. The marshal is responsible for enforcing the rulebook, keeping the fight safe and ensuring that both sides have a fair chance to score clean blows. A warning during a bout typically signals one of three things: a technical breach, an illegal strike, or unsafe behaviour that puts another competitor at risk. Some flags are preventive, asking you to back off before a foul becomes a foul. Others are punitive, applied after a blow that landed illegally or a hold that violated the prohibition list.

In Australia, most rank-and-file fighters come from clubs like the knightly orders in Brisbane, the Melbourne Sword Guild, or the crews in Adelaide and Perth. Each of these clubs drills safety into muscle memory long before anyone straps on a bascinet. Even so, adrenaline, fatigue, or a misjudged opponent's reach can tip an otherwise clean fighter into a technical breach. Understanding that warnings exist to protect the integrity of the sport, rather than to single out individuals, helps you swallow the sting when your number comes up.

The colour system at a glance

IMCF bouts use a coloured-flag system along the sides of the list. Each marshal in a five-reff crew watches a different zone: head, body, legs, weapon, and an overall safety officer. A flag lifted in your direction tells you which marshal spotted the issue. The colour tells you how serious it is.

Flag colour What it signals Typical response
Yellow First warning, technical or minor infraction Acknowledge with a nod, reset stance
Red Second warning, same category of foul Pause, check gear, refocus on rules
Black Disqualification-level infraction Stop fighting, leave the list calmly
Blue Time or distance warning Adjust spacing, manage pace
White No-fault clarification, fighter safe Resume without change

You do not need to memorise the table the night before a tournament. After a season or two of regular opens at places like the Royal Melbourne Show grounds or at the Canberra Medieval Festival, the colours become second nature. The trick is to treat every flag as information rather than as a verdict on your worth as a fighter.

Cooling your nerves after a flag

When the yellow goes up against you, the worst response is to throw the next blow even harder. Fatigue, frustration, and adrenaline form a cocktail that pushes fighters toward the very behaviour the marshal just flagged. A measured routine helps. Take one full breath through the nose, exhale through the mouth, and reset your feet to a neutral stance. Drop the shield a hand's width and roll your shoulders. These micro-movements buy you the two or three seconds you need to let the spike of adrenaline pass before the next exchange.

Australian clubs often teach what older fighters call a quick grounding reset. Have a quick squiz at your opponent's feet, then at yours, then nod to the marshal. It is a simple way to re-anchor yourself in the physical world after a flag has dragged your attention to the rulebook. If you train at a club in regional New South Wales or out near Bendigo, your captain will probably drill this routine into you well before the next big outing.

If you find yourself flagged twice in a single bout, the reset becomes more important, not less. Conditioning work matters here, because a fighter who has trained their gas tank to last five-minute melees without fading will still be thinking clearly at the four-minute mark. There is solid guidance on training for the long haul that walks through the kind of interval work that keeps both body and brain sharp deep into a bout.

Adjusting technique without breaking rhythm

A warning is also feedback. If the marshal keeps flagging your distance, you are probably crowding your opponent or, just as often, leaving too much gap for them to exploit. If the flag is about strikes to the back of the helmet, your hook may be swinging too wide. Looking honestly at the pattern of flags you receive across a tournament weekend is the fastest way to know what to drill at the next training session.

Many Australian fighters swear by a quick post-bout debrief with their captain while the gear is still on. Five minutes of "what got flagged, why, what to fix" beats a long conversation over a beer later that night. The rulebook reads the same in every country, but the way coaches interpret and translate warnings into drills varies from club to club. In Sydney, for instance, coaches tend to focus on footwork patterns after a body-zone flag. In Perth, where reach tends to be longer among the heavy teams, coaches often pull fighters aside to work on inside-line control after repeated weapon flags.

Throwers face their own rhythm challenges. A flag for a thrown weapon that lands flat, edge-in, or out of the designated zone is a common second-warning trigger. Practising the actual mechanics of a clean axe flight, rather than just chucking axes at a stump until something sticks, makes a real difference. A solid walkthrough of balanced axe mechanics gives fighters a feel for the spin rate and release point that judges are looking for.

When to accept and what to clarify after a bout

There is a fine line between respectfully clarifying a call and arguing with a marshal. The IMCF rules cap a fighter's right of reply strictly to procedural matters: was the right flag used, did the right marshal call it, was the timing correct. The facts of the strike itself, whether your opponent overstepped or your blow landed low, are not open to on-list debate. A captain or team representative can lodge a formal protest after the bout, in writing, through the marshal coordinator.

If you think a flag was wrong, the in-bout move is brief. Step back to neutral, signal to your team captain if one is at the fence, and continue the fight as if the call stood. Save any conversation for the post-bout debrief. This is hard for newer fighters, especially those used to combat sports with more conversational referees, but it is the expectation under IMCF protocols. Australian fighter etiquette, with its strong "have a go, take it on the chin" streak, fits naturally with this approach.

Two situations warrant a quick word mid-bout. The first is if you genuinely did not hear the whistle or see the flag and the marshal gestures for clarification. Stepping briefly to the side to check in is allowed. The second is if your gear fails mid-round, a broken strap or a cracked visor. Stop, raise the off-hand, and let the marshal see you are not staging a delay tactic. Both situations are handled quickly and rarely draw a penalty on their own.

Building match temperament through regular sparring

Referee patterns, and the calm responses to them, are built long before tournament day. Clubs that run regular inter-club sparring sessions, sometimes called "in-house tourneys" in Australian club slang, give fighters a steady stream of low-stakes flag exposure. Each flag in sparring is a free lesson. Marshals at these sessions are usually club captains themselves, so the feedback is detailed, kind, and focused on growth.

Three habits build match temperament faster than any single tournament run:

Four small tweaks that also help between opens:

Australian clubs have a proud tradition of rotating fighters through captaincy, judging, and marshalling roles. Spending a season on the marshal crew is one of the best ways to understand how flags get raised, why the call feels slow to a new fighter but lightning fast to the marshal, and what the rulebook actually says about the contested moments. Many of the most respected captains in the IMCF Australian scene started out learning the flag system as a junior marshal at a local open.

If you have just received your first warning in a bout and feel the heat of it, take heart. Almost every fighter on the IMCF international circuit has been there, and the ones who turn warnings into training cues rather than personal slights are the same ones you see still competing in their forties. The federation publishes its rulebook openly and updates it each year, so the source material is always within reach. Read the relevant section, rewatch your bout footage if you have it, and arrive at the next session with one specific drill in mind. That is how a referee warning becomes another step in your progression rather than the story of your day.