Had my busiest, best-paying week ever as HS season is in full swing and we had a big local tournament with girls' teams from all over the state. Worked every day Mon-Sat, 4 CRs, 2 duals, 5 ARs (all varsity games). Now if only all this corona stuff would die down and I could actually use this ref money for a European vacation...
I had a great day Saturday working some SCCL games. Competitive. No issues from coaches or spectators. The games were good. Sunday I worked a local tournament. All U10 games, solo. I learned a lot from the spectators and coaches. A player has five seconds to throw in the ball or else the ball goes to the other team. A goalkeeper cannot dribble the ball from outside the penalty area to inside the penalty area and then pick it up. If he does, that is a penalty kick. If a foul happens, I need to call it immediately instead of letting the fouled player continue to dribble toward the goal and actually take a shot on goal. One coach would not let that go. He stepped on the field to argue with me about it. After the missed shot on goal he wanted to take the free kick from the spot of the foul. I told him to get back to his technical area and we'll talk about it. He refused and kept arguing his team deserved the free kick. That got him a yellow card. A ball kicked to a player’s elbow is still a “handball“ even if the elbow is tucked in and plastered to the body. Even if the elbow is not sticking out a millimeter. Same coach argued about that. The ball was in the center circle when it happened. I stuck my elbow out and said "If this happened, yes. It is a handball. Tucked in against his body, it is not handling." He stepped onto the field, walked toward me and said "There is no difference. Handball is handball." After twice telling him to get back to the technical area, I showed him the second yellow, then the red. High school season starts January 24. I am glad for the break.
That's my point though. Piss off all the spectators (parents) on your team, you'll keep your mouth shut. Exactly my point. If an entire sideline of parents gets ejected from one jerk, that jerk is going to be humiliated and ashamed of his actions by everyone else and should act as a deterrent of future actions by anyone on that team. I should say that the game termination for a send-off happens in our league if it's the only coach for the game, but I assume this is universal. And I think it's difficult to justify not wanting to enforce too harsh a penalty because you assume the refs will be too afraid to give it. Why have any penalties at all then if you're just going to say that it's putting pressure on the refs and will make them too scared to do anything? Maybe it could be adjust down to that If any spectators are thrown out of the match, the coach receives (usually) a one match ban for failure to control spectators, and then in the following match, no parents will be allowed to attend.
Don't give him a break here. Straight dismissal. Or, if you do give him a break on the first and just caution, don't give him the break the second time he does that.
Laws of the Game make this very clear - leaving the technical area to dissent is a straight red. I almost had to do this today (see my Bad Stories) post. The coach screaming about a red card almost left his technical area. I told the coach to not come any closer to me or else my recommendation was going to change from caution to send off - and he was the only coach there. A 2-1 win would have been an abandonment and likely forfeit if he had continued to walk toward me since there would have been no coach.
Had one of these earlier this fall. I'm AR1, coach stepped out of his technical area to dissent a call (by a step) and I suggested he step his one foot back about 6" so that he wouldn't need to be sent off. He did, but continued to dissent and rightfully got cautioned. His reaction? Throwing jacket and clipboard to the ground. Easy second caution. Would've been simpler to just get rid of him on the first -- sometimes you just can't help them.
Looks like I need to brush up on this. This is only the second time this has happened. A few years in between. Interestingly, by the same club. I gave a first yellow both times. Thanks!
LOTG, 12.3 Sending off offences include (but are not limited to) ....entering the field of play to: confront a match official (including at half-time and ful-time).....
It is. The update to giving coaches cards codified a lot of things. Including delaying the restart for the opposing team as a red. If a coach kicks the ball away or stops the opposing team from taking a quick throw it's supposed to be a red.
I don't know that dissent necessarily is the same thing as "confront a match official." I think we have some wiggle room here, if we choose to use it, to caution for dissent even if the coach leaves the TA. And I think the lower the level of the game (as well as the lower level of the dissent) the more sense it makes to use that wiggle room--if it is barely onto the field and the coach promptly goes back where he belongs.
Had a yellow card for goalie stalling during my son's EAL showcase game this past weekend. Pretty much as soon as their opponent scored the first goal of the game (5 minutes into the 1st half), it seemed as if they were committed to taking as long as they could to get every ball back in play. Ref noticed it pretty quickly, but it finally came to a head in the 2nd half (still 1-0) when the goalie set up for the goal kick, then picked up the ball to replace it on the other side of the goal box. Ref showed yellow. 2 side notes to the game: 1. Crazy ending to the game - my son's side finally broke through with about 8 minutes left to tie the game at 1, followed by a free kick goal by the other team about 2 minutes later and another tying goal by my son's team with 3 minutes left. 2. Apparently, during the discussion that followed the yellow for stalling, our coach asked the ref if he would be adding time on for all the time spent and the ref explicitly told him that yes, he would be adding time on. As soon as he blew the whistle for full time at exactly 45 minutes, our coach went nuts, yelling that he told him he would be adding time on. Ref pretty much just shrugged his shoulders and said the game was over. Our coach was really pissed (and it earned him a card as well).
Honestly, I'd be pretty frustrated, too. I obviously wouldn't lose my cool like that, but that ref either didn't care or engaged in deceitful behavior by saying "Yes, we will add time for time wasting." It's even more evident when you decide to show a yellow for delaying the restart -- which is in essence -- time wasting. So now you have told everyone there was a violating of time wasting but then you won't even have _any_ stoppage time? Then went asked about it -- the referee literally just shrugged and gave him a yellow (for being rightfully frustrated)? Oh boy. Coach management is just lacking... I would not want him to be my center. Probably the kind of referee that doesn't give a red because "he didn't feel like he wanted to do the paperwork.".... Yikes.
I would suggest that a caution for dissent is appropriate, like the Laws of the Game says. I would also suggest that entering the field without the referee's permission also calls for a caution. 2Y = 1R. We can discuss what rises to the level of dissent but I think trying to find a difference between dissent and confrontation is a little wonky. Does a 'confrontation' have to be physical? Physical posturing with anger but not touching? Finger jabbing and yelling at 20 paces? I guess I'm just having a hard time thinking about what it would look like if a coach comes onto the field but is not 'confronting' an official.
Had a GA game yesterday where I was AR1. Away team set up a camera (one of the elevated Veo/Trace ones) on both sides of the field instead of the usual bench side only. When I asked the coach if it helps them a lot, he said it was mostly there to record the audio from the parents side. Turns out this club does a pretty good job at getting it's parents to behave (and they did) and the camera is their insurance policy against behavior from the opposing team. In this game, the coach said his players heard some nasty things from the home parents and when AR2 said he heard nothing the coach simply replied "that's fine, we'll just send the audio to the league again". I can respect the coach wanting to do that and in this game I did think the behavior of the home fans was too much, but as AR1 there is only so much I can do to push the ref.
That's actually pretty smart - I didn't think about that. My son's team always has the Veo on the parent side since one of the other dads runs it. But the bad thing is now I realize that my son's coach hears all of my terrible dad jokes during the course of the game . . .
This has been a big annoyance of mine for, well, decades. When I was a linesman (yeah linesman so that far back) I recall multiple centers doing pretty much the same thing (less that yellow) in a number of games. I played a lot as well and knowing this was happening made me mad when I was playing. Separately, I still recall at 18 running the center of a local Mexican League game with one team doing everything they could to stall. When I blew the final whistle, half the losing team came running up to me. I showed my watch which had over 5 minutes added time (a lot for that era really). They shook my hand and went on their way. One of my ARs for the game had been doing everything short of running on the field and screaming at me trying to get me to end the game. (Eye contact and hand signals didn't help). As a coach I would catch referees skimming time off games to get home early and then say they'd already reset their watch when asked. Oddly, once you comment on the game length pre-game their watches work just fine. They must be using smart watches.
There is one game from this year that I really wish I could watch the video on, but I doubt they got the right angle that I want to see...
One of my friends is a former college coach and now runs a recruiting service. He and I share a Dropbox folder where he puts his video of the games that I center. It’s really helpful to watch yourself on video.
We have several referees in our adult league that we joke will start their watches when they get out of their cars. You know something fishy is going on when one guy has his HT and FT whistles a good 5-8 minutes before everyone else.
Some years back, a good friend and I had centers on adjacent fields for a weeknight MBB league. Games and second halves started at the same time, and I could hear his 2H going sideways - multiple mass confrontations, a player screaming obscenities, whistles and whistles and whistles, etc. So when he blew his whistle to end the game, and I looked at my watch and saw 6 minutes left, and I remembered my game was 4-0... well, I blew my whistle too. One player looked at me questioningly - I glanced towards the other field - and he nodded. No reason to make that referee's life any harder that night.
If I'm in a particularly good mood, once. After that I talk to the coach who removes them. Any adult who taunts a 9 year old has some pretty serious issues to deal with and needs to be given time away from the field to manage those issues.