A partner specific bad story to go with my good weekend at Adult Regional Championships. I'm AR1 on a men's open division. Late in the first half, there is a fast ball over the top on the far sideline with the 2LD close to midfield. I take off to keep up with play and slam into the coach whom was on the touch line for the first time all game. I tried to grab with my right hand and his shirt ripped out of my fingers. My first conscious thought was, "F***! I'm out of position!" Based on the feeling on the back of my head, the coach is lucky he didn't end up with a broken nose. The coach then sat down on the bench for the rest of the half instead of standing at it. My friend was 4O on the adjacent field and happened to be addressing the technical area behind me. Some quotes from him telling the story. "[Dayton Ref] literally sat his ass down!" "I looked over and the coach is on his ass and [Dayton Ref] is 2 yards onto the field from bouncing off and starting to run again." I was fine. I know it wasn't my fault, but I feel bad. The man looked to be 70 and he might've broken something.
A long-standing member of NISOA going back decades: https://www.courant.com/obituaries/william-bill-j-fortin/ William “Bill” J. Fortin OBITUARY
For the second time this season, one of my friends had their first PRO assigned game as referee canceled. Game was Saturday, and I would wager that the visiting team couldn't get a flight with the world-wide BSOD issue. I'm not even positive he would have made it to the game.
You guys have to see this one https://www.instagram.com/p/C9vkreyuwFO/ "The tournament specifically told referees to limit their use of yellow and red cards because teams paid a lot of money to be here". My following match if I saw that written in writing to me: And I saw on some message board about this that the tournament refused to increase or provide decent ref fees, so the usual assignors boycotted, and they got terrible referees from much farther away because no one decent wanted to work for them. Well this is what you get. I'm telling you, I'm honestly going to look into buying the keychain pepper spray and keep it in my pocket during any sporting events I referee to threaten using and then use in self-defense if I need to. Only concern I have is the prospect of potentially facing a lawsuit if I used it on someone.
Rude, I just posted a new thread about it! https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/mass-con-referee-assault-at-surf-cup.2131584/#post-42412433