I'm covering the entire spectrum this week. Tuesday - girl's high school JV/V doubleheader Wednesday - USL AR Thursday - women's D-1 AR
First 37 centers this year - total of 7 yellow cards. Last 18 centers - 9 yellow, 1 red. Do you ever find yourself becoming less patient as the playing season progresses?
I had no significant complaints from my U16/17 Boys DA center on Sunday! I had great ARs that helped me keep focus on what was a miserably humid day. The game was 2-0 at half time with the home team as said by the coach, "We're one goal away from putting them away." Then in the 49th minute one of home's center backs committed his second tactical foul of the game earning his 2CT. I'll admit that I wasn't ready for him to commit a second tactical foul and wasn't ready to send him off until I saw how low he hung his head. The game ended 2-3 with 5 cautions plus 1 2CT. I got some good feedback from my ARs and now am looking forward to an all DA weekend, including a pair of boys derby games, U16/17 AR and U18/19 Center. Yes. I have also found that the start of the season leniency gets shorter every year. My tolerance for BS now lasts about a weekend.
Of the eight games I was assigned for a local rec league (mostly 6th graders and younger), the first four got weathered out by Irma, and 1 1/2 got lightninged out last night. No complaints by anyone. I didn't see the bolt, but I heard the boom. I turned my head to the sound, then looked at the closest coach. He said "Lightning." I said "Did you see it?" He said he did. I dropped the Pearl, switched to the Tornado and laid down a loud tweet. It got the attention of the surrounding fields, officiated mostly by teenagers. The director decided to end the early games, and with the impending storms, postpone the later games. Can't mess around with electricity.
My college game yesterday had lightning 10 minutes before scheduled kickoff. We were delayed 45 minutes past scheduled kickoff. After consultations with the conference commissioner, we agreed to play 2 x 35 with only five minutes for halftime. The scheduling problem was that there was another college game right after ours and they had to be off the field by a certain time for some other use of the facility. The second game also had to play 2 x 35. Nobody wanted to reschedule, after all of our air quality issues delayed a number of games earlier this month.
I have had a double-touch kickoff at girls' Varsity, JV, and C-Team levels this week. 3 in one week, not once in many years before this.
It's been the same course, with the same very bad videos (some of them are so bad you can't see the action) from the 1999 world cup. Last time I checked I'm not reffing the world cup... It used to be decent, but now its just bad...
This deserves a rep, for visibility, but a qualified rep. If you have your jersey on then tell the truth, even if it's a "I think that..." truth.
U19 boys. As we shake hands I get "good game"s - did I punctuate that properly?- (or that) from the players and the winning coach, and an "Excellent game" from the losing coach. This is a young man - compared to me - who knows how to derive pleasure out of a situation. May my boys continue to grow toward that.
I just got home from a Futsal Referee Instructor course here in Canada. A fantastic group of folks on the course, and some great learning took place. I'm already a soccer instructor (and assessor), and as is typical, still learned a whole bunch of new stuff that will be applicable to both futsal instruction (and assessing), and soccer instruction (and assessing).
I was Center for a U-11 boys travel game at the weekend. First half passes without incident, pretty even, 1-1. The away team was kicking off at the start of the second half. Upon kickoff about 5 of the home team immediately charged forward, all yelling and shouting like a bunch of wild hyenas. I immediately blew the whistle and just said "come on guys, what are you? 5 years old? have better sportsmanship" and told the away team to take the kickoff again. The home coach apologized, apparently he wasn't aware. Correct or no? I guess technically they had not broken any laws but wasn't in the spirit of the game.
If one had a toe on the line of the center circle, which someone almost always does, you would have a technically correct basis for retaking the KO. But even without that, I would challenge the assumption that they had not broken any laws. Law 12: Unsporting behavior. You would have been fully within your rights to select the most unsporting of the players to caution, and restart with an IFK. At 11U, I've got no problem with what you did being consistent with the spirit of the game, and even if a toenail wasn't touching the line, retaking the kickoff rather than cautioning being an acceptable bending of the LOTG.
I might add, "That was unsporting behavior. I could caution all of you, but let's just re-take the kick-off without the shouting. OK?"
Does this mean that the home team coached actually COACHED his kids to do this??? I had a kid in a tournament do something similar. U14B game, ball was heading to opposing player and he was about 5 yards behind him, and just yelled "HEY!!!" or something else completely unintelligible at the kid in order to have him misplay the ball. I blew the whistle and gave him a YC for UB. He pleaded that he didn't know he couldn't do that. I told him that this makes it a good lesson then doesn't it? Coach was also stating he didn't know and if I couldn't give him a warning first. I told him I can't really stop the match during play just to give a warning, and it is a good learning experience for everyone on the pitch.
This weekend I did a double header for a JC school. I used to cover this school for the past 2 years until I recently moved out of the area. I was heading back to my original area to do some D1 and D2 college matches and decided to help out our assignor cover some mid day matches. I was scheduled to work the women's match with the whistle and an assistant on the men's match. I worked with 1 official I had worked one game prior. He was from outside of our state and worked in a much smaller state (we will call Joe). The other official is a young buck 19 year old guy who told us he wants to go AR track but is working on upgrading to a state referee (we will call Rob). My match goes without issue. I had maybe 1 caution could've had a 2nd caution but kept it in my pocket. After the match Joe comes up and gives me 3 points to work on for managing players. I explain to him that this match didn't demand that I have a strong presence and sort of shrugged off his over-zealous attempt to "coach" me. Even-though he and I are the same USSF grade. We continue to the second men's match. Which was the complete opposite of my match. The match was a high-spirited with the referee Joe giving some player a random A/C 5 minutes into the game. The first half ended with 2 cautions and no goals. Second half starts and 15 mins in I think this guy is in trouble. He has some serious issues with players and dissent and gives out 2 cautions to both teams for dissent. The match finishes with 8 yellow cards and 1 red card. He whistled about 48 fouls (give or take a standard deviation of 5). As both teams were shaking our hands a player for the home team that I am familiar with gave me the best compliment I think a player has given me. He told me "You should've been in the middle instead of this dude [Joe]. Send him back to where he came from. We were looking forward to actually playing today."