Question :

Since my Dutch field hockey club strongly advises against using my iPhone or AppleWatch to do time registration when I’m referee (even though there are various referee apps available), I have bought myself a low budget referee watch : the StopTec RW-100.

This €20 referee watch is primarily a soccer (football) referee watch, but it is advertised as being a general referee watch for all kinds of sports, like field hockey.

The watch looks and feels good, but both the manual and the buttons on the watch aren’t very intuitive when you prefer ‘Japanese style use’ (i.e. figure out how it works without reading the manual).

How do I use the StopTec RW-100 as a field hockey referee watch ?

 

Answer :

Check out the one-page manual included here.

First (before the match), set the Game Time on the watch to match the true game time. A soccer (football) match is 2 x 45 minutes, so it is already set to countdown 45 minutes. An international field hockey match is 4 x 15 minutes, so you need to set it to 15 minutes. And a Dutch field hockey match is 4 x 17,5 minutes, so to match that, you need to set it to 18 minutes and rely on the alarm beeper that goes of 30 seconds before the countdown reaches zero.

• press the MODE-button to get into Game Time Countdown view
• press the ENTER-button for at least 3 seconds
• after hearing the signal sound, press the START-button to adjust the game time countdown
• when the game time is set, press the ENTER-button to return to the Game Time Countdown view

Then (during the match), keeping track of the time is rather simple :

to start the game time countdown : press the LAP-button (top-left)

to stop the game time countdown (in case of a time-out) : press the LAP-button again (the stopwatch will automatically start running to track the time-out duration)

to resume the game time countdown : press the LAP-button again

to reset the game time countdown : make sure the countdown has stopped, then press the LAP-button for 3 seconds

And (during the match), you can also keep track of a penalty time (only one penalty time at the same time though…) :

to start the penalty time stopwatch : press the START-button (top-right)

to stop the penalty time stopwatch : press the START-button again

to reset the penalty time stopwatch : make sure the stopwatch has stopped, then press the START-button for 3 seconds

Note : you can get the StopTec RW-100 referee watch on Amazon DE, Amazon UK or Amazon US and it is good to know that any lookalike watch, sold under various brand and product names (e.g. Leap Referee watch or Firelong Referee watch or SWatch Sports Coach or VGEBY Sports watch), is supposed to work the same.