http://fortheintegrityofsoccer.blogs.com/artandscienceofrefereeing/2010/11/for-several-years-we-have-been-stressing-certain-concepts-and-techniques-relating-to-soccer-referee-officiating-and-its-instr.html#more Ed Bellion mentioned this thread and talked about the post Vergara made. I don't like the fact that many National or potential National referees are being instructed by referees who don't have the experience and that's talked about. Also I enjoyed this nugget. "This concerns the inane requirement that ARs sprint all out as much as 25 yards to the goal line to indicate a goal kick when the ball has been kicked hard and high or wide into the seats or onto the next pitch, with no decision needed at the goal line about whether the ball has gone out of play. It makes more sense for the AR to simply jog to the 6 yard position, give the signal, and then resume normal positioning. We noticed that this was done by several ARs in the 2010 WC." Thank you Ed it is inane. I've noticed several posters on this forum pointing out being very annoyed at their ARs for not following this bullshit procedure. I hope it's clear FIFAs aren't doing it, it doesn't make sense to do it...lets call the whole thing off!
And here's an official (at least as official as you can get) reference telling you not to do it: http://www.askasoccerreferee.com/?p=865
It's a good habit to be in. When you need to be there, or need to bust your ass to get down there, you are in the habit of doing it every time so it should come naturally. I'm not really in favor of half-assing it. That being said, stopping at the 6 is ok, as I have heard from a FIFA AR. You can stop at the 6 or go all the way to the goal line, but nothing in between. There's no need to go balls-out getting to the goal line on a ball that was blasted 20 yards high and wide of the goal, but what's wrong with running down there? 'Jogging' too slow looks lazy and projects a poor image.
When my first game is at 8am and my last game starts at 8pm then I'm not sprinting to the goal line when the ball gets Skyed.
That in itself begs the question of why you would ever be doing so many games, but that I guess is a different question altogether
This often happens, where referees have to do numerous games in a day, due to a severe referee shortage. I've worked tournaments doing as many as 7 games a day, and there are still many games that are worked solo at those tournaments, because there are just not enough refs.
That is a failure of the State soccer association. In our State, the State office will not approve the tournament applications of multiple tournaments in the same geographic area of the state on the same weekend. The assignors in the various area are queried regarding the number of referees they are able to attract to their area of the State, to staff tournaments.