What are those again?? Those are like unicorns where I am from. I have read about them, but never actually seen one.
A few days ago during the last match of the competition, futsal, youth, one of the coaches was outwardly absolutely well-behaved. Scything tongue in compensation-mode. The third referee handled a couple of the ascerbic comments about what a bunch of jokers. There was much truth in that. The second referee calls a goal clearance immediately after I whistled for the touch and signalled corner kick. Not the first time either. And not even 5 minutes elapsed. No serious incidents, just mismatched signals. Unbelievable it all was. From the pre-game it was obvious what we thought about being on same wavelength was all out of tune. Next time I hear a mutter in my direction from the o-a-w-b coach, I inquire, what was that coach? His response, you guys have no clue. My response, you are right.
I was AR1 when my daughter had the whistle for a U-14 or 15 girls game. She was, I think, about 18 at the time. A player protested a non-call by yelling "Sir!!!!" My daughter turned to her and said, loud enough for everybody to hear, "First of all, do I look like a "sir" to you?" The player's teammate responds "Way to get the ref on our side, Jenny." That was the end of it.
Modest level varsity HS boys game, a minute and 28 seconds left to play. Spirited, good natured game, six yellow cards in the book, and I'm smellin' the barn. Ball goes out for a throw-in, subs, OK here we go. "Referee! Referee! Referee!" Aw jeez. "Referee!" "What?" "He's wearin' a chain!" Aw jeez. "Come here." Doughy-looking sub shuffles over slowly. He's wearing a chain necklace, outside his jersey, with a cross hanging from it almost three inches high. He could have mugged somebody with it. "But it's a cross!" "It's jewelry. Come on. Now I have to card your coach and write a report. Thanks." "But it's a cross!" "Come on." We walk over to the coach, far side of the field. "What is it?" "Jewelry coach, sorry. Here's your card." "What!?" And he starts going off on the kid. "What are you thinking? I told all of y'all before the game to be sure to get all your jewelry off!" "But it's a cross!"
Now I need this in Spanish and Korean for some games I do. Changing lanes. White vs. Orange, I'm AR2. Parent of a white player complains about all seven offside calls on his team at the far end. "There is no way they have been offside seven times. I can see it from here they weren't offside." At least he got the terminology right. Second half and his team was offside twice in the first three minutes, five in the first ten. He agreed with every call. I asked him if it was possible they were offside in the first half. He said "Your AR apparently did a good job."
Running on the indoor track yesterday. 4 x 400, 2 x 200, 2 x 100. High school rec boys basketball games going on below me. I would have SWORN that I heard a coach down there yell "Hand ball!"
Last Friday one of our HS refs had a kid with an unusual celebration after a goal. He took his cleat off, sniffed it and then placed it on his nose with head tilted back. The ref went with a YC for UB, reasoning that the shoes are no different that the shirt and you cannot take off your shirt. Obviously it doesnt say that but that was his reasoning. He was also thinking this was borderline taunting and wanted to stamp that out before it got worse at the next goal. Depending on how close the player and the act is to the GK at the time, I think it could be considered taunting. I'm not saying that's right but I think you can get there. Keeping in mind HS has a straight red for taunting, do you leave this alone, give an AC, go YC or worse? Thoughts?
I think a yellow works in that situation. The HS rule book gives you a reason for UB...er, I mean UC. It's the same reason in the rule book you would book someone for removing a shirt during a celebration. "any delayed, excessive or prolonged act(s) by which a player attempts to focus attention upon themselves and prohibits a timely restart of the game"
I'm 100% in agreement. It was mostly prevalent at recreational level with younger, new refs. They had so much to pay attention to on the pitch that they rarely remembered to look up to see if there were subs. I was never really bothered by having to call for it, and I usually waited a few seconds to see if they noticed. I was always sure to get my subs ready to go on and have them at the half ready to go before I'd call for a sub. It would annoy the crap out of me when a coach would call "sub ref" when a ball went out then start telling kids on the bench where they wanted them to go. Really the only thing that would annoy me about new refs was if they had a lack of conviction in their calls. Just make a call, if it's wrong it's wrong, but call it confidently. I had a few that would just let the kids (or worse, the parents) call throw-ins for them rather than making a call. When my son started reffing my advise to him was have confidence and make the call every time, even if it's the opposite of what a coach or parent is telling you.
Dang, sometimes it's (this) old ref too. Last night I had a varsity girls' dual where I not only felt a step behind but also felt like I was getting touch line calls wrong as often as right. Once I reversed one and told a player "Sorry, I'm a little dyslexic tonight." She replied "Then you shouldn't be ref'ing," and I kinda had to agree. Seriously, by the end of that match I was thinking "Maybe it's time to hang it up." Then we did the boys, and it was a terrific, fast, skilled, hard but mostly clean close game, and a lot of fun, and I thought "Well, maybe I'm good for one more year at least." But then this morning I texted my assignor and told her no more two nights in a row, I've reached the stage where I need at least one day to recover.
Agree or not - BOOK IT. You might be having a bad night and you may have come to some self realizations during the game, but I would never tolerate a player undermining me or any one of my AR's.
And this is why for this age group, we now have clear out lines at the 1/3rd mark. All goal kicks or goalie possession and attackers have to go behind the line until ball is put in play.
I wouldn't do anything unless this was public enough that people could hear it. So what if she says something... if no one on the field can hear it or only a few players can (maybe) hear it; is it really undermining your authority? Smart man.
Coach to his defender: "You gotta hold him! Hold him!" Defender wraps his arm around the attacker and yanks him off the ball. Whistle. "I didn't mean that kind of hold him!"
"I'm a four and you were a step behind the whole game." - Said after a game by an attacker who's team was about 50% for staying onside. I resisted the urge to say, "I was a step behind you because the defense stopped and you kept going." I also know there are only a handful of National Referees in South Texas, he was not one of them
I read a couple of game reports from a week ago in our largest men's league. Noon game, O-40 men. After the game, a player comes to the referees and is asking snide, demeaning "questions" of the referee, like "have you ever actually played this game?" The referee, unfortunately, choose to engage rather than just caution him for dissent. The game report included the entire discussion however, which apparently went on to the point that the referee, finally, told him to just leave. And then there's an O-30 game at 6 p.m. same day, same field and the same guy is playing in that game as well, where he receives a caution for, you guessed it, dissent. Makes you wonder how the second game would have gone if the guy had gotten a caution for dissent after the first game. Me? I would have gone red on the first game (definitely insulting, definitely abusive, and phrasing it as a question only works when you're talking to Alex Trebek), which means I keep his player card, so he couldn't have played in the second game.