I keep an old pair of running shoes, socks, shorts, and a yellow and red shirt in my car. Worst case is that I wear a beat up uniform for a game.
Yesterday had one of those frustrating games that almost make you want to quit. GU16, State Cup, last game of group stage, both teams already eliminated from advancing. Add to it a rookie AR2 who I'm having to mop up some questionable calls. Home scores a goal to make it 3-1, with the ball coming close to crossing the goal line before being sent in for a shot. None of the players argue it on the field, but an away bench player decides to argue it was out. I cautioned the player for dissent. (No complaint from the coach, ironically.) Less than 15 minutes later, that player commits a clear reckless tackle, 2YC and sent off. Most players were surprised as they hadn't seen the first YC, but the player knew it and walked off. But from there, the away team was even worse. Someone yelled "ref you're trash" and I couldn't identify it to punish. Final score 4-1. What's frustrating to me is that my assistants thought I reffed a really good game, Away team had nothing really to complain about, they were just undisciplined and ready to blame me for their poor performance. And while the coach never argued, she also didn't try to encourage good sportsmanship among her players.
So, have we had any bad assignor stories? I am assigning the big CT tournament of the year - usually 400 games, but only 325 this year. Last year I had over 200 refs working. This year, I will be lucky if I have 130. I usually only give 4 games a day, 5 max. This year, I am having to give 6 and 7 games a day and putting a lot of newbie refs to work. But I am bashing through it and have about 95% of the spots filled. And the tournament starts on Friday night. So, about an hour ago, I get an email from the (newbie)scheduler, who tells me 4 teams just dropped out and here is the new schedule. I have no idea how this worked out, but there is only a net of minus 1 game (must have given some teams extra games). But they made 15 changes to the schedule. Adding a game to this field and removing a game from that field (at different locations). I can't just take the refs off one game and move them to the other - they would have to drive to other field and would be late. I'm so PO'd, I can't even look at it right now. The amount of extra work I gotta do to fix this mess is just silly. And I'm guess I'm gonna either have open spots, or refs doing their 8th game of the day. They definitely don't pay me enough. This just made the bill for next year go up $1000.
Assigning is easy. Reassigning is hard. Thats where I always felt I earned my money. I know that for state level events here, if you have to reassign for things outside your control (like weather taking half the fields away) you got paid for the original work and the redo as well.
You're doing your job to get all of the games assigned, but as we all know, these folks are not going to be mentally focused and physically sharp for the 6th and 7th game as they were for the third. No win situation for everyone involved as the parents, coaches and players don't care you have new refs and some guys doing a lot of games when a foul or offside is missed. Do you mind if I ask what folks who worked for you last year stated was their reason for not returning this season for this event?
Preaching to the choir brother. I hate doing it. As far as why not working for me this year: a) did not get re-certified b) spring break this week and many are away c) low pay (this is unfortunately true and I asked for more $ for refs and was told no) d) surprising number of refs away on travel for anniversary, 2nd honeymoon, trips with spouse e) couple of my regulars are doing exchange student stuff in Europe
My opinion? Keep the open spots, not 8th game of the day for somebody. When they complain, tell them "well, I asked for more money for the refs but you guys said no and many refs told me they do not want to come back because of the money so..." Best thing you can do for fellow refs. If I may ask, what does the tournament pay?
I don't understand, you aren't allowed to just be realistic with the league? I understand that you're being paid to assign. But if you can't field enough refs, there's nothing you can do, period. Give them that list of reasons, even name those refs who usually work who are gone. Tell them you physically do not have enough referees to possibly cover all their games, especially with their last minute changes. Tell them they are not paying enough for people to work their games. Tell them that you aren't going to risk your referees' health and force them to do more games than they can safely do. Explain to them that refereeing is voluntary and you cannot physically force people to do games or "fire" them because they are independent contractors with freedom to work or not. If they start blaming you, then that shows how much they care about their refs and how well they treat them, they treat you all like crap. Quit and tell them to f off.
Pay structure U9/U10 7v7 - 50 minute game - $25/$15 U11/U12 9v9 - 50 minute game - $30/$15 U13/U15 11v11 - 60 minute game - $30/$20
This is the 6th year I have assigned this tournament. Every previous year I had more refs than I could use (for 400 games) and told many newbies to come back in a year when they had some experience. I was constantly amazed with the number of good, experienced, adult refs who would come back year after year for this low pay and relatively few games (4-5 a day). And I would ask them why (after thanking them) and they would say things like well run tournament, give back to the kids, and to the quality of assigning process (seriously). No one is going to be blaming me. I have been loud and clear about the hurdles I am facing this year. And they know my track record of success. The bad story part of all this is that the large numbers of refs who have stopped reffing for all the reasons that make refs quit. That part of the equation is totally out of my hands. We work pretty hard to make refs feel appreciated and protect them from the jerks, but stuff always happens.
That is absolutely horrific. Wouldn't catch me dead there. Also an unrelated bad story, I have just cleaned my Acme whistle with denture cleaner and I have discovered that the little attachment on the back that the metal ring on my flip grip goes thru is wearing down and will probably break thru at some point making the whistle unusable. Does anyone have advice for something that isn't metal that can be used to keep the whistle on the flip grip? I assume the metal constantly flipping rubbing on the plastic is degrading it.
I take it this is a sentimental and/or high value Acme vs. the $10 ones? Finding find plastic split key rings that are small & narrow enough yet strong enough for the job could be a challenge. Maybe somewhere like Fastenal, Grainger, Ace, etc. has something that would work. I added steel nano quick clips and split key ring to my flip grips. It gives extra length for my big paws and holding it between middle & index fingers. Also makes swapping whistles quick & easy. [/nerd]
No actually it's a $7 Acme Tornado 2000 whistle. I know it's only $7 but I don't like having to replace stuff like that. I ended up finding a tiny metal ring on an eyeglass screwdriver keychain, then super glued it into the whistle (so that it can't move and wear down the plastic) and attached the flip grip's key ring to it. It's not perfect and removes a bit of the flipping functionality but I'll see if this works.
Best rates for tournamnets in the area are: U9/10 $40 solo U11/12 40/20/20 U13/14 40/30/30 Some pay at end of day and provide food, others not so referee friendly. I have more adult referees willing/wanting to do the small sided games at tournaments, same money with less running. FWIW, I am in the same area as DefRef, it's opening weekend for most clubs and he is stealing my regular referees this weekend.
Why would anyone in this day and age do games for those rates? I know I’m in a high pay area but I will be doing 5 u-littles plus a u-15 center and line this weekend for $420.
I hear about this happening all the time, and it finally happened to me this week at HSB-JV match where I was in the middle: Careless foul, injury, player not getting up; wave over to the staff to come on. Coach beelines straight to me, not his injured player, going on and on about the world's problems etc etc etc (even though, yes, I literally just made a foul call in his favor. The diff between careless and reckless seemed beyond that man-ape's cognitive abilities). I tell him to back away (I wanted to say get-out-of-my-grill, but I was nice) and indicate he should attend to his player or exit field. He refuses and continues his rant. After a beat, give him another chance. Refuses (mumbles something about "you can't make me!"). Out comes YC and he stalks away; totally forgets about his crumpled player (who was fine in the end I think; he came back on later after a bit). Varsity coach came by post-game to apologize for his JV coach's behavior. Fun game though, was most enjoyable overall.
So the way to deal with that situation is, after you call the coach on, move to the far touchline. If the coach passes the injured player and comes to you instead, pop the yellow card on him. Don't give him two bites of the apple, do it early in the rant. This isn't about 'protecting yourself from criticism' so much as it is about how it looks in the context of the whole game. Don't let everybody else there think that they can chew you out because this guy did. When that happens, they stop playing soccer and start being spectators. If he's just being a jerk, he will understand that he can't continue without getting to leave. If he is truly out of control, then he won't remember where he is and what he's doing, and that means that he does need to leave, for the good of the game.
That is good advice, it's why I always step some distance away from an injured player if I am calling a coach/trainer on. Not all the way to the far touchline, seems a little extreme, but I go at least 10 yards away and at an angle where he would have to deliberately go off the path of the injured player to confront me.
Also bad story for my schedule this weekend, a ref friend and I were signed up for a few games together this weekend. Saturday he's U19G ECNL CR I'm an AR, then Sunday I'm U19B NPL CR he's AR. U19B NPL game was just cancelled. We almost never get to do games together and always talk about our frustration with substandard refs in our leagues, so it was going to be nice to be together, give each other advice as the games went on. But can't have that.
If I did 5*U-12 and a U-15 center, I would receive $297 in my area. It's not bad, at all, but I'm still jealous.
I think that studying the professional and semi-professional game has made me go completely off the deep end with cautions. I used to hardly give any and now it's just ridiculous. My past 4 centered matches Last weekend: U17B EA: 8 cautions Today: U16B NPL: 5 cautions U17G ECNL: 0 cautions U16B mid-level comp: 7 cautions The U16B comp was an anomaly as it wasn't even a heated game, there wasn't much fouling, there wasn't a bunch of yelling, it was just individual ridiculous reckless and late challenges. I probably could have managed my way out of one, maybe two (the second was a late challenge where there wasn't much force it in, but the slide was so unbelievably late I felt it was deserved), so game management vs. immediately going to cautions is something to work on.
Today Adult rec game: 2 cautions (one for PO against a single player then the offended player got in face and pushed the last guy who fouled him so UB for him) U13 low level comp. Figure this should be an easy one right? Gave 3 cautions, two easy reckless and one PO. And two penalties one for each team That's 25 cautions over those 5 games. I just can't believe what's going on here.
I have a fellow track official who is the President of a major business lobbying organization in our state. My companies belong to a different business lobby group. This weekend, we were discussing our organizations' positions on the governor's race in the state. Her comment was that the polling they had done came back with numbers that they've never seen before. The public is just plain angry, with unprecedented levels of anger about politicians and government administrators. I would submit that the public's free floating anger rolls over into the players and spectators/parents of the games we do.
That's what I heard a lot of people saying as soccer came back after the lockdown, how much more crap they were dealing with from coaches, spectators, players, more red cards, more confrontations, more dissent. I never experienced any of it until these past few weekends. The thing that's so frustrating is that it really isn't even like I'm just being too technical with SPA or something. Of these 24 cautions I've given, I maybe could have managed my way to "borderline YC" and not give a card on like 3 of them. 20 of them have been straight reckless.