I was curious about the views of other referees on this forum regarding their approach to accepting/turning back assignments. What leads to my question is this: I am already working my state's amateur state cup this weekend. I was assigned (by assignor #1) four games (two on Saturday and two on Sunday), and I accepted them all. Last night, I was assigned (by assignor #2) a W-League line that conflicted with the second of my Sunday games. (No doubt my fault for not updating my availability on ussoccer.gameofficials.net after accepting the state cup games, although I have received assignments on ussoccer.gameofficials.net in the past even when I had made myself unavailable). I declined the W-League game. That was the right thing to do, in my opinion, because I had already committed to working for assignor #1, even though the W-League assignment might take precedence in the eyes of some people given that it is a USL game rather than an amateur match. Also, I feel much less bad declining a game I haven't yet accepted than turning back a game I already accepted. I'm curious how people deal with these types of situations. Do other states have formal rules regarding priority of assignments? Would you all have accepted the W-Leauge game and then turned back one or both of the Sunday amateur matches? Do you all have your own informal rules for these situations? How do you manage working for multiple assignors without causing them undue inconvenience (apart from managing your availability better than I did on this occasion)? Discuss. EDIT: I originally wrote WPSL instead of W-League.
P44 of the Referee Administrative Handbook, you were supposed to turn back the State Cup assignments in favor the WPSL game barring extenuating circumstances.
WPSL is still an amateur game and it's not USL either. We had this conversation a bit in my state with respect to PDL and W-League and at that time with that administration state cup took precedence. All are still amateur, but state cup does feed into a national cup competition. Keep in mind that there were also some political factors at play.
Oops. I meant to write W-League instead of WPSL. The post has now been fixed. Anyway, there hasn't been clear guidance from my state, as far as I know. But I appreciate your experience.
No problem. The SRA should be in some contact and have some contact with the LAC as well. In areas where these functions work together, this shouldn't be a problem to work out. One thing that our admins started to do was send the LAC/State Assigner a list of referees they expected to use for youth or amateur state cups in advance to head off conflict and confusion.
State cups of all types are on the bottom level of the priority list, just above the unwritten "all others" You don't "have to" accept the higher game, the admin book says "However, there are certain occasions when a referee has duty to the referee program to release a lower level appointment and accept a higher level one in the interest of the U. S. Soccer Federation. " This means that you can, without repurcusison, turn back an already accepted game for a higher rated game as long as its 72 hours or more. However, in discussions around this, you should be doing what's "right" for both your personal path/career, and the game itself. For example, suppose your state cup game is the top tier, two brutal teams and it's going to be a very challenging game that needs a strong referee to handle and you were picked for it for those reasons. The W league game is going to probably be a blow out 10-0 with no issues. Which game is better served by you doing it? Which game are you better served by doing?
I agree with NHRef on this. Let me point out that W-League is not listed in the USSF "Game Priority in Referee Appointments" list. State Cup, youth or amateur, therefore takes priority. As noted, you are not obligated to accept any game. In this case, the referee has already accepted a priority game and is being offered a non-priority game. It's hell to be popular. There is evidence that some Catholic saints were in two different places at the same time, but none of them refereed soccer. The referee in this case has to decline the W-League contest. The SAC should also see that there are no issues with either assignor for the referee, so keep him/her in the loop. And let the W-League assignor know that you appreciate them thinking of you.
The trouble is that the referee is not always in the position to correctly judge the situation. Add the following issues to the W league game...one of the teams is spending big bucks and hours of their time to get to the game for little in return, all for the sake of maintaining some semblance of higher level women's play, and their last game had major issues with game official attitude towards "girls games" and the team owner who is losing 50k per year to bankroll the operation is about to throw in the towel...and...and...and... Then which game is more important to "the game"? I'm not suggesting any of these things ever happened in this case - they are just for illustration. As for the OP, it seems to me that senior competitions should not be in the practice of using their precedence to leave junior competitions in the lurch at short notice, unless there is a really compelling reason. The "precedence" appointments (not under USSF) I ever got were normally assigned with enough notice that nobody was inconvenienced, aside from one provincial cup semi-final I was asked to do that was postponed by a few days due to weather. In other words, if you are making last minute appointments (< 1 week) either your competition isn't that high level as you think it is, or there is some very unusual circumstance.