Lack of referees means less in expenses. Teams not leaving means more revenue. Follow the money, always.
This doesn't make any sense. You still have two, just one has a flag instead of a whistle. The referee is always out of position when he's down an AR anyways, or his an idiot.
This is why parent volunteers for games U12 and below will soon become the norm for most areas since clubs will have thousands more to pay for their "professional" trainers and will never go back. I've done both. Neither scenario is ideal. It's unrealistic to look for both the offside and whistle fouls. It's not great missing an AR either, but I'd rather have that. I started in the era when having an AR was a luxury. I cringe blowing my whistle from not-ideal angles. I watch high school games from the stands and it's a given that a few offsides will be missed each match.
Yeah we know, this is in case there isn't a third person. I don't get the argument that having a referee and an AR is preferable to two referees. Sounds like the exact same to me.
Well that’s the problem with duals, right? It makes you worse at the diagonal system. It’s hard enough being good at how it’s supposed to be done. A club line does not bother me- doing duals makes me feel like an idiot. In my association, our assignor insists on 3 for varsity- duals on occasion for Jv and varsity. And for that i am grateful.
Had to do a dual in a game yesterday and had a situation where I was the AR1 position dual and a challenge happened on my side of the center circle and I started calling out "no foul no foul" and then the AR2 dual called a foul on it. That was pretty frustrating. And at halftime the coach came to us and said he didn't like that the other guy had called a few fouls that I was calling out no foul on because he felt he was too far away to make that call.
This used to be a thing here, and other places. But referee shortages is what caused that requirement to go away.
If we didn't do a lot of duals, even some Varsity games would cancel; been an issues for last several years. We're having some reschedule to Mondays & Fridays just so they can play. But, no recovery days can take its toll on some of us. We had three of us for a HSGV game late Saturday afternoon. Visitors from two hours away said it's the first time they've had three officials all season. Also, what you mentioned is something comms have really helped with on duals. It's not perfect, but they've prevented some simultaneous pointing in opposite directions.
As a side note, here's an interesting thing with our association and the state. In our chapter, it is the school which decides how many officials they want for the game. If we do a dual, we get paid $89 per person. If we do a double dual (3 men with whistles) we get paid $89 per person. So it's a question of finances, and there is one school that wants 3 for each varsity game, while many schools pick and choose which games they want. I know a few schools give a coach 4 times when he or she can request 3 officials for budgeting purposes. As a chapter, we went to the state and said we will take a paycut and go to our club U-19 fees so we could do DSC for varisty and duals for JV. However, we got nowhere, because full quotes here https://tribhssn.triblive.com/piaa-doesnt-support-diagonal-pilot-program-for-wpial-soccer-officials/
I think one of the big issues that is often overlooked is time. It's one thing for a retiree to go and do two high school games that start at 4:00 or 5:00. Or a college student. But it isn't 1970 anymore- you can't go work an 8-5, do two soccer games, and come home at 9:00 while your wife had the kids all day. Same with the weekends, if I left my wife home with the kids all day Saturday or Sunday (or both!) while I reffed, I'd be divorced. There's always going to be a bit of a donut hole where we can get young refs and we can get old refs, but we can't get a whole lot of people in their 30's-50's.
We became empty-nesters at the end of summer. This fall season my game count went up about 40%. I was worried about the same, but she went and got a dog... no, i'm not kidding.
On Sunday, I did an adult amateur women's game. The league primarily plays at a multi-field complex at 10 and 12 on Sunday. They only do solo referees and that really is as much as these games need. I had noticed on our website that there were a lot of games with no referee having self assigned into them. When i arrived for a noon game, I noticed that the fields were all in use. The teams were simply playing without a referee. And it showed. One of the teams for my game said I was the first referee they'd had this season. It become apparent that they would just accept anyone's claim that the ball was over the touchline and any contact with an arm or hand was treated as deliberate handling. One player, with the ball at her feet, completely stops playing and wants to discuss what the Laws of the Game say about handling, after she thought that she had received the ball from a deflection by an opponent's arm. Everybody else just stopped too. I just said it wasn't deliberate and moved away, so they started playing again. Mostly 20-something former small college players.
I assign both Saturday morning youth teacher games (U7/8, U10, U12, U14, U17) and competitive D2 games in the afternoon (anywhere from U13 to U20). I have no problems filling the rec games. I can’t get anyone to do the D2 games. Fortunately the league has cancelled half the D2 games for lack of players/teams. Otherwise they would have to cancel them for lack of referees. it’s been bad.
Oh man. My chapter's schools all set their own rates, and while the trend has been toward standardization we are nowhere near as consistent nor lucrative. $65 is not unheard of and $85 is remarkable.
Referees cost money, but not nearly the amount as trainers, tournaments (which is indirectly some for refs) and field rentals. I used to be treasurer of the local club. I spent time cost analyzing those things. $2-$6 per player per game.
Yes...this needs to be talked about more. The cost of the referees is very little compared to field space, coaches, admin etc. I get a touch annoyed when I hear "it costs too much". 15 players on a roster = 30 players on the field. $3 each and you have yourself a $90 referee...for less than the cost of a coffee. (well...a good coffee)
This is one of many reasons why a dual system is not the answer for referee shortages. Sounds like the coach was polite and had every reason to be pissed that your partner called a foul from 70 yards away. He came to you because he saw you were the reasonable guy he could voice his frustration to, unfortunately, it puts you in a difficult position on whether you should throw anyone under the bus. No matter what you say in the pregame and even if you get a bullhorn yelling "nothing there!", this guy was still going to blow his whistle. Yes, I do care what coaches think when you have a play like this where you have no reasonable defense for what occurred.
OK, I’m new to doing duals properly (when I “learned” 40-some (gasp) years ago in a rec league, we were awfully close to 2 ARs with whistles), and I have my first real dual next week. But if you’re actually doing a dual (instead of two ARs with whistles), shouldn’t a ref never be anything close to 70 yards from play? So isn’t the criticism more about the performance than the dual model, per se? (And isn’t the ref who is 70 yards away going to be the AR who is 10 yards off the OS line? While I’m a firm fan of the diagonal system, it can’t fix lazy.
I had instances of that last night on a HSBV dual. Watching a tight back-n-forth OS line at my end with quick possession in their attacking third. But both teams liked boom-ball clearances & counters with almost no one in the midfield, so my partner and i often ended up 50+ yds apart. I was almost burned a few times in the 1st pushing too far up for the style they ended up playing, so at times we had to hang back a little more than usual.
This can be a big issue on corners. You want to be near the penalty area to get a second set of eyes on the wrestling match, but if the defending team leaves a player or two up top and boots the ball that way, oh dear. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Yeah I don't believe that story unless the referee just shouldn't have been there because they won't move. Dual system requires movement of two referees constantly. It's not ideal and it's not going to solve everything, but it solves the problem of when you don't have 3 referees. Know what your responsibilities are, know what's the more important call and area to cover, and get closer to play without leaving players behind you.