Agree wholeheartedly that not wanting to flag does not in any way make you a bad marshal, in the same way that me not wanting to be an observer - and spending 25 years trying to avoid the role, made me a bad marshal - tried it, was c**p at it. Didn't mean i didn't do the job if persuaded(forced) to.
I can see why the MSA would want everyone to be capable of doing any job - after all most people on this forum probably think they could do a better job then that lot in the MSA
Unfortunately I believe they have gone about it wrong way as regards the flagging side of things.
The main problem I see is the fact that a trainee has to get a flagging assessment in order to get upgraded from the dreaded novice/trainee tag.
In order to achieve this they have to spend some meetings flagging when they have only just started marshalling and hence they probably feel ill equipped to do what most people percieve as a difficult job.
Some will undoubtedly say that it is up to the experienced flag marshals to overcome this apprehension by giving adequate training, and to some extent I would agree.
I think this brings us to the real heart of the problem and something that maybe was not really anticipated when creating the current upgrading system - its is very difficult to teach flagging to trainee marshals, it was hard enough to do it under the old system when you normally only had to contend with trainee flag marshals, who at least, could be expected to have one or two years experience of being trackside and an understanding of how things operate.
Having had some experience of trying to help trainee flag marshals gain the required experience to achieve the 'blue' upgrade, I can appreciate why some flag marshals may be unhappy to take on extra training duties.
Having been out of the sport during the current system I have no experience of what training the experienced flag marshals are given in how to train the trainees - anyone like to enlighten us?
In another thread Ian Briggs asked 'what it would take to persuade experience people like me back to the sport'. Well, apart from a massive pay rise
, I am not sure, maybe some feeling that the upper echelons of the sport had some appreciation of how things operate at ground level.
At the moment the BMMC web site does not give access to the training guidelines document as it is 'awaiting update', but what I can remember of the previous version it did not really seem to give much information of what level of training you are expected to give a trainee during their suggested 5 days 'flagging'.
It would be interesting for people in this situation to enlighten us. Where do you start and how far do you need to take the training