Adult men, there is pro/rel. Top team in the lowest division is up 13-0 at the 2nd half water break. Their opponents decide to not come out for the rest of the game. They pack up and start to leave. Home coach is livid. He wants the 13 goal differential. A forfeit would be a 2-0 decision. So the center told the home team and the referees to stay on the field until the clock strikes 90. He said the league can then have two choices. The "completed game" at 13-0 or the forfeit at 2-0. I have NEVER had that situation before. What would you do as CR?
It seems the referee crew are trying to violate the spirit of the league's rules to me. Also, if the opponents did not come out, they don't have 7 players, so the half can't have been "played". I'm not sure what else to call that other than a forfeit. But it's certainly not a completed game. Just because the refs were on the field for 45 minutes doesn't mean that the half was "played". It just means that the refs wasted 45 minutes of their lives.
A forfeit could be a 2-0 decision. One of the first things we should all learn about these sort of issues is that referees don't decide forfeits, competition authorities do. Period. You officiate per the LOTG and the rules of competition. There is no team there, so you end the match. You then make a full report documenting exactly what happened. If the competition rules are so rigid that a 13-0 lead turns into a 2-0 forfeit given the facts... A) that's really stupid, B) I'm sure the winning team will appeal and C) if they lost an appeal, given the stakes, they might pursue legal action. But, D) all those things are out of your hands. Even in leagues with the silliest rules and the most rigid actors, I tend to believe the 13-0 would stand. Either way, the league might want to revisit the language around forfeits (as well as, perhaps, if there can be a max figure for goal differential in an individual match--but that's another question).
Agreed. In my experience, you write up the match report as a forfeit if one team doesn't show up. Even then, it's probably shorthand. In this case, you have abandoned the match. From the glossary: Abandon To end/terminate a match before the scheduled finish There used to be a persnickety distinction between "Abandon" and "Terminate", but that seems to have disappeared in the latest re-write. Put it in the match report: "In the 68th minute, with Wanderers leading 13-0, I suspended play for a water break due to temperature and humidity. At the end of the water break, Auld Boyz refused to retake the field, packed their gear, and left the field area. Since there were fewer than seven Auld Boyz players available for the restart and it was clear that this would not be rectified in a timely manner, I abandoned the match."
Just to pile on to what others have said: a very common line in entry-level referee courses is "never say the 'F' word." The word forfeit is not in the laws of the game*. It's not our job, not our responsibility, not our business. Ref the game per the laws of the game. If something unusual happens, submit a factual match report. The referee is not God, nor the judge, nor the arbiter of justice. He not only doesn't have the responsibility to "set things right" -- he doesn't have the authority to. (*Ok, technically it is, but not in the context of forfeiting a match )
I might add something in case the league officer who reads this is as obtuse as is possible in adult soccer leagues... "The manager for Wanderers strenuously objected to the opponent leaving because they feared losinf a plus-11 goal difference their goal difference advantage in the league standings." It depends on how competitive this league is, but this is why a lot of amateur leagues place a cap on the maximum goal difference that can be earned in a match to discourage just this kind of thing from happening.
This may be a matter of confusing this with a different situation - if rather than leaving the teams ask to end the match early, you can/should have them stay on the field (even if by the benches) until the full match time is up and then end the game (in any match that matters), as then you do not leave the match open to protest/replay.
1. Referees do not determine if a match if forfeit or not. That is up to the league/competition authority. 2. Some leagues have rules about forfeits that say the score for a forfeits are 2-0 or whatever the score is when the game ended. 3. Years ago when I first started doing adult amateur games, there was a team in first place at the end of the season. They were playing the second place team in the last game of the season. If they lost by 3-0, they would lose 1st place and the championship. However, they wanted to forfeit the game and take a 2-0 loss and win the championship, but they still wanted to play the last game as a friendly with the referee crew there. I can't remember the outcome, but I do remember that we told them that if they forfeit, we referees would not stay for a friendly. The next year, the league had a new rule that if teams forfeit games to manipulate the standings if their favor, the team would be deducted points in the standings and fined.
Yeah, I'm sure the team that has taken the 13-0 shellacking in the first half and wants to end the game will be ecstatic to stay on the sidelines not playing just to get the full match completed for the benefit of their shellackers. /s EdIt: A noted above, simply report that the game was terminated/abandoned at halftime because Team B's players left the site and there were not enough players to continue. Note that the score at the time was 13-0. That's it. Let Team A appeal to the powers that be to accept the score as final if that is in their interests.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the UPSL rules is that under these circumstance--after second half water break, around the 68th minute (as @RefGil says), the away team refuses to take the field--the referee would abandon the match and submit a full report. The league authorities would determine the match a forfeit and assign a final score of either 2-0 or the score at the time the match was abandoned, whichever is more favorable to the opposing team.