Ralston's yellow vs Dallas

[sandman012]

ITs done and over, and he's been the man for the Revs this year (ok, one of two), so this isn't a complaint, just a question:

WTF was Ralston thinking?

I've never seen a player throw a ball a another player and not get a yellow. I just thought Ralston would be the guy to keep his cool in that situatioin.

Guess he just lost his head and that's that. I didn't tape the game, and can't rememeber exactly who and what pissed him off so.

[Rodan]

It was Deering. Deering threw a late elbow after he knew he got nabbed fouling Ralston from behind (considered it a kind of a "free shot" I guess). Tacky move by the pony-tailed wonder. Poorly timed knee-jerk reaction by Ralston. I don't think he thought about it for a millisecond.

Spilt milk now. Whadaygonnado?

Typical reason why Deering is not one of my favorite players.

[Popero]

Silly silly silly move. Reminds me of the Mathis move, though obviously not as severe. Knee-jerk reaction to a foul gets you suspended for the next game.

[scrub]

I was agitated to say the least when I saw Ralston do that. Stupid stupid stupid.

On a related subject: Is there any yellow card accumulation amnesty when entering the playoffs? Or was Steve simply giving himself a clean slate so that he can run wild during the playoffs?

[Popero]

I thought I heard that the accumulation went to zero at the start of the playoffs, but don't quote me on that.

[soccertim]

I think that yellow cards do reset for the playoffs, and then you get suspended if you get 2 in a series. I don't know if they have anything for aggregate yellow cards over multiple series.

I don't have a particular problem with Ralston getting suspended because he (even though he retaliated) deserved the yellow, but I wish that they'd modify the system. The way it's designed, with total caution points (21 or 22 or whatever) for the season, punishes both card-happy players and people like Ralston who are clean players but pick up the occasional card, be it for dissent, time-wasting, slowing down a break, or whatever. If they limited it to something like cards over the previous 20 games or so players like Reyes and McKinley (and Joey) would still get time on the pine but players like Ralston would get suspended less often. This becomes an issue because these suspensions for "calmer" players always seem to occur in the last few games, which are generally critical.