A question from a coach (me<G>). In a game my U-10 girls travel team played this weekend one of my players was tripped but kept her footing and continued up field. After 3 or 4 steps, as she passes the referee he calls out "play on, advantage". Well you guessed it .. that caused every single girl on the field to freeze in place. Fortunately my player 'woke up' and continued to maintain posession, but her advantage was completely lost by this point. I turned to one of my parents (who is a grade 7 ref) and said "I wish the referrees wouldn't do that (yell play on when play is patently continuing anyway)", to which his reply was "he is obliged to". So to your refs out there, is that the case? Do you really have to verbally indicate an advantage situation when play is contuing with no intervention, or is that purely a judgement call?
How else do you tell the players that you saw a foul, but that you are giving the attacking team the advantage? It helps those that aren't watching the ref to see if he's going to whistle or signalling with his hands. It also tells the fouling player that she was caught, but that it would penalized the fouled team more if it were called this time. It tells the fouled player that, yes, indeed you're fouled, but go ahead and keep your advantage. This is something you should discuss with your girls now that they've experienced it in a game. Next time they should be ready to continue playing.
You really should indicate play on advantage with both the arm signal and the spoken word. It is strange that at U10 travel, players would not be familar with the call and know to continue playing. I could understand this if players were younger, say U8 where advantage is not typically called to assist players in learning what consitutes a foul followed by some brief words to the effect you can't do that it will be called a foul. If you don't call advantage particularly as players get older they think the referee is missing the fouls and a lot of bad blood can develop over the course of the game. By players becoming familiar with the advantage call they realize the referee saw the foul and allowed play to continue. It facilitates the flow of the game and as players get older they really learn to appreciate advantage. Many times you might hear players say at older youth and men's matches why didn't you allow advantage?
I'll share a story from this weekend that I think can help illustrate the importance of verbally indicating Advantage, Play On. I was center on a U14 girls rec game. Red player A is holding the ball in her defensive end near the parents' touch line. She has her back to midfield and is very effectively shielding the ball from Blue. Blue is all over her, pushing her, kicking at her feet, etc. trying to get the ball, but Red A deftly passes the ball to Red B behind her who starts an attack upfield. In my mind, I was playing the advantage, but I neglected to yell "Advantage, Play On". Just as I started upfield, I heard Red A's father yell "If the ref's not going to call pushing, you push her right back. Knock her down if you have to!" I circled back, shouted "Bad Advice Parents" so all could hear, and then I told Red A that I had seen the foul and had played advantage because of her nice pass. Then at halftime, I went to Red A's father and explained the advantage rule to him, something he had never heard of. I also encouraged him to yell his criticism at me directly rather than instructing his daughter to commit a foul in the hopes that two wrongs make a right. Had I yelled "Advantage, Play On", the father still may not have understood and possibly would have still shouted his ignorant comment, but the players would have known that I was well aware of the foul and doing my job to allow them the advantage. This would have hopefully defused any retaliatory play by Red. Not verbally indicating "APO" is one the key defeciencies that I've noticed in my game and I find this thread extremely interesting in that light. Jarrett
Re: Re: Advantage 'call' stops play You would have thought that, wouldn't you? I'd even take the 'blame' for not preparing them if it was just my players who froze, but both teams did so at the same time. Maybe it's just a 'girl-thing'<G>.
Good story - one point WJC - good situation. One point that I will offer is that I have often been told and I typically apply this theory when I do the center is this - in the defensive third of the filed especially down near the 18 the advantage is always the whistle for a defender in this situation. In your case all worked out but what if... Yeah you could blow a late whistle and bring it back but for control purposes it is much easier to whistle the foul in the defensive third and let the defense move the ball out with a kick. Just my .02 .. Any thoughts from the more seasoned guys out there?
You could have spent 15 minutes on advantage during practice and maybe half the girls would have understood. Now you can explain it in about 60 seconds, and they'll all understand. They're U10 and have a lot to learn. Enjoy! I suspect something in the CR's tone told them to stop. Hopefully, both teams know now.
Re: Re: Re: Advantage 'call' stops play Had the ref been talking to them at all during the game? I work with some refs that never speak on the field. When a grown man that has been silent for 30 minutes all of a sudden shouted "Advantage Play On", I'd probably stop too if I was a 10 year old girl. I like to talk the whole time. I try to always call the color for the throw or the type of restart. In addition, I talk to the players a lot (Nice shot, excellent pass, just one step offside that time, etc.)
Re: Good story - one point I actually had this exact advice given to me during a maintenance assessment (Grade 7) last week. I'm pretty liberal with the advantage rule, preferring to let the game flow rather than get choppy. I was told that unless it is 100 percent clear sailing ahead of the attacker and he/she has momentum going forward (not backwards with time to turn), always whistle the foul in the defensive third. The theory that was given to me (a bit oversimplistic, I think but still makes sense) was that the defensive team would rather have the chance to place the ball and advance it 30 yards with one kick than take the chance.
Jarret, Actually, "APO!" is a method of signalling a foul and announcing that should the expected advantage fail to materialize within a second or three (which is now interpreted as being the advantage for the attackers), then the referee is reserving his option to stop play, and award a restart at the point of the original offense. This is not to be confused with a "no call" where either it was doubtful (looked like a foul but in the referee's opinion was not such as accidental handling or a hard but fair charge), or was trifling (was a foul but had no effect on the opponent or, as I have recently been informed by the powers that be, is trivial). The situaton you described in the defensive end sounds more like a situation where the offense was doubtful or trifling and therefore no call was, or should have been made. If the jostling or pushing had no effect, was not careless, reckless or with undue force, then it would not have been a approprieate application of APO. This said, it is often a good idea to let the players know you are on top of things, even when it is a no-call. Avoid, however, using any phrase that includes the word "play". Some years ago an assessor caught me up on this and suggested I say nothing. So I did. When it is doubtful or trifling I say "nothing!", "nothing there!", or "no foul!" to let the players know I saw what happend and made a decision. It would be unusual to apply APO for the defense, since in most cases the whistle and restart are to their greatest advantage, and the least advantage to the attacker, which was, by the way the former instruction. Sherman
Another example of not understanding the concept of advantage, again at u10 competitive: Player with the ball is a few steps outside the PA, traveling roughly parallel to the 18, looking for a chance to cut in toward goal. An opponent trips him, but the ball squirts out to a wide-open teammate. Signal and, "PLAY ON!" From the coach I hear, "Play on? for THAT?" The coach evidently thought that by invoking advantage I was saying it was no foul. I might have enlightened him at the end of the game, but he further demonstrated more of his ignorance as the game went on, and I didn't want a confrontation that would have ended up with him in my game report.
Actually the referee had been saying very little to them, and his speach was a little strange (as he is deaf) which may account for the girls stopping (they did the same thing in a game a year ago when the referee yelled "play-on" so loudly I think they were simply too scared to continue). One more lesson for me to pass on to them though
Re: Re: Re: Re: Advantage 'call' stops play Ooops, sorry Jarrett, it was you I meant to quote in my last reply. BTW, I really like your sig line - I've been a Hitch-Hiker since the oprginal radio series was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 back in the UK (I'm originally from Scotland - in case my nickname doesn't give that away).
Re: Good story - one point Interesting - this happened to my sweeper who was bringing the ball out of the back. The foul happened maybe 3 yards outside the PA. I'd have been happy with the free kick as my goalie was hitting her goal kicks over the halfway line that day (2 ended up in the opposing goalie's hands untouched).
Re: Re: Good story - one point The object should be to kick it to a teammate - not play catch with the other keeper.
Re: Re: Re: Good story - one point Ever heard of soccer tennis? She can do it over the length of a pitch<G> (actually we were playing a a pitch about 15 yards shorter than usual as this was a make-up for a rain postponed game and we were stuck on a rec league field so she had difficulty jugding the distance). She scored on a DFK from over 20 yards out to the farside upper 90 in the first half when playing midfield (she scares the beejeebers out of me sometimes).
Re: Re: Good story - one point In the case I described, the player was actually a good 30 yards off the end line...therefore probably in the grey zone of whether the better advantage is a restart or a play on. Whipple was spot on with his observeration...the main reason I didn't call APO was that it was right there on the border between trivial and a significant foul. Because the girl was not taken down or dispossessed, I really decided that it was trifling and that's why I didn't verbally call APO. But as the situation developed with the parent, it became convenient to assume that APO was the real reason for my not making the call. When I explained APO to the parent at halftime and urged him not to encourage his daughter to commit fouls, it was much easier for me to explain it to him in this context rather than tell him it was insignificant, because he definitely did not think that was the case. So I used some poetic license to better illustrate my answer to the original question in this thread. Whoever said that referees "do it by the book" wasn't kidding! Jarrett
Re: Re: Re: Good story - one point Well, doctor, it is not so much the book, as it is the history, and this is almost unique to soccer. Being a good referee goes beyond mechanics, foul recognition and knowing the proper restart, though all of these are important. Great referees are invariably students of the game, and this one is rich with 140 years of history, where we can trace back every Law and practice to its roots. As referees we weren't even around at the organization of the sport, by an association of public schools in London in 1863, when Rugby refused to give up the use of hands and went off to form their own sport. As I recall, it was not until 30 years later, when the Laws of the Game were formalized that they had an official "referrer" who was present on the sideline to answer questions and settle disputes, but only when requested by the captains. I don't know whether they gave us the authority to stop play before or after they first allowed us on the field. I do know, however, that the decision to allow the referee to stop play was considered somewhat revolutionary at the time. In 1966 while I was living in England, I recall some manager or commentator during the Cup, complaining on TV about a call and remarking that, as far as he was concerned "the day they gave the referee a whistle was the darkest day in sport." I also recall a reference to the game in a fictional work set around the beginning of the 20th century, pre WWI, where the referee, one of the schoolmasters, stopped and restarted play with a bell. This would suggest that he was probably still on the sidelines (which as any coach will tell you is still the best place to see exactly what happened even when 85 yards away). The point of this ramble, however, is that the principle of advantage goes back to before we were allowed to stop play and only the captains could call for a stoppage to solicit a decison from the referee. If a foul did not disadvantage a team it is unlikely that they would want to stop play, and if a restart were of greater advantage to the opponent, the captian would be out of his mind to call for a decision. So, when they did finally give the referee the authority to stop play, so as not to be an interference or deny these basic rights of the players, the application of advantage was a fundamental contstraint. This is embodied in Law 5; Decision 8 (V8), the spirit of the game. By understanding this little bit of history we become better referees because it guides us in when we need to blow the whistle, signal APO, or just let play go on. It is the game that tells us when to do this, and what to do. Not the offense, but the players and it is different at every level of compentiton and for every game we do. It can even change during the game.
I could always tell you had a lot of experience from your posts Sherman, but I didn't know you were THAT old -- old enough to remember the formalization of the rules in the 1890's.
"Advantage - Play on" is something I always cover in my pre-game with the players, particularly with U-12 players. I prefer to tell them that if they suffer a foul, but their team is still enjoying the advantage of the attack, they may hear me say "Advantage - Play on" and put out my hands. I've never gotten a startled look as a result.
It would appear that I may be that old (or at least I sometimes feel that way after a four game set), and they say the memory is the first thing to go. I was mistaken, the interval was not 30 years, They actually started using umpires, one from each team, as early as 1870 and a neutral referee on the sidelines to settle disputes, keep the record and manage time, began to emerge about the same time. When the referee officially moved from the side to the field, the umpires became the linesmen, and ultimately the AR's.