The 2nd Annual MTOC Thread

Friday and Saturday are up here:

http://www.mayouthsoccer.org/mtoc.html

I am at Mullens on Friday and Saturday. The fields are in a little better condition there than behind the Stadium. They are so bad that many of the State Cup matches, particularly P/R rounds have had to be moved off site. I don't know how much better they will be in a week from now.

Sherman

 

I could be in for a busy weekend. I informed the assignor that I may be coaching a Boys 18 team at the tourney...I'll know Sunday at about 7:00 PM after our playoff game.

I report to the stadium at 11:30 Friday and if I remember correctly, I'm reporting at 7:30 on Saturday also at the Stadium.

My sources tell me that there may be several schedule changes because of poor field conditions after the State Cup matches. (I've always wanted to say "My sources tell me....")

Any word on how to sign up for the dorm rooms??

Scott

 

WIN FOR PKH 3-1!!!!! Taking a team to MTOC for the 2nd straight year!!!

Also, just got off the phone with the assignor to confirm with him I'd be coaching a team in the tounamnet. Dennis agreed that it would be best if I concentrated on my efforts as a coach and I'm on the reserve list of officials. Best wishes to all refs in the tournament!!!

Scott

 

Ya, Dennis does a very good job with assignments. I believe the he's the assignor when I work the District Select tournament in the summer.

Make sure to check us out...I actually have a good team this year!

Scott

 

So, how'd we do, Scott?

I did 10 assessments and got to watch my son's B16/1 team make it to tomorrow's semifinals. Usual gamut of good, bad, and ugly on (and off) the pitch by refs, coaches, players, and spectators.

One story of many.

As a referee, I have always had this fear of stepping into a port-a-potty and having some disgruntled team come and upend the thing. Completely irrational and unfounded, or so I thought until today.

An AR made an offside call that denied a goal. The final margin of defeat was multiple goals, so that one could not be called the game breaker. This did not matter to one parent who berated the AR, followed him to the loo and proceeded to beat and kick the door.

 

Semifinals and finals washed-out.

 

Recap of my weekend:

1st game - 3-0 loss. can't comment on officiating as it would be against the referee code...oh, what the hell...handling still has to be intentional...doesn't it? Also, let me know if I'm wrong on this one, but if all your players are in the attacking half and your opponent's attacker is stradling the half way line, is he not in an offside position???

2nd game 2-1 loss...team played very well but lost the lead in the 2nd half...tough to play without your red carded starting sweeper...team finally fell to fatigue.

3rd game 1-0 win...I had to appologize the the opposing coach after the match. My team should have been given 2 red cards for violent tackles and were not even shown yellows.

Interesting wet weekend. Field 13 was as close to unplayable as you can get.

Scott

 

An Early Return

The wet fields were too much for us, particularly for the older players who were already slipping and sliding and generally ripping up the fields by Saturday evening. My last game was a B18 at 4:30 and it was quite difficult on the players.

The good part is that we were able to get in all the round robin games, so every team who played got in three games and the final four at each level were able to recieve some recognition. I did have a chance to watch Scott's team play. I thought they showed good effort and skill.

I was also on the line for the team Nat's son plays on. We were being assessed on that one. The assessor moved completely around the field during the assessment and was very thorough and positive with both the center and the senior AR. He didn't have much for me, probably recognizing that I was a lost cause from the start.

The most interesting part was discovering just how many referees who were there read this forum, but don't post. They are probably the smart ones.

 

Re: An Early Return

Which field were you on. I was playing on #2 (Framingham v. Woburn), but I believe all U18s were playing at that time.

Concerning the rainout...The most annoying part for me as a player on a personal level was that the last game my team played was meaningless and we lost, which will annoy me all summer until H.S. starts. We clinched our section after 2 games and just shut it down for our last one Saturday evening to make sure no one got injured (especially with all the mud) for the semis. It's also annoying when no clear winner is decided after busting our balls all season to get to where we were. Damn rain.

 

Re: Re: An Early Return

I was next door on Field 3.

I agree... Damn rain!

 

My son's semi-final was supposed to have been on 13 this morning. The boys enjoyed watching a girls team have fun playing around in the puddles.

Very disappointing that the MTOC champs were determined based upon the best record of the teams from the three groups. The best two B16 teams I saw (and I saw 8 of the 12, including the alleged champ) played to a hard-fought draw in their bracket on Saturday, thus seeding them third and fourth for the semis.

Champions should be determined on the field.

 

Did they really designate champions based on how they did in the group stage? I thought they just gave everyone t-shirts and told us to leave. That really pisses me off if that's true. I would assume that for U18 Weymouth (who we were to play in the semis) won because they had 9 points. Not to make any excuses but it pisses me off even more because we were more worried about our semifinal (we didn't care about trying to play the wildcard, we just cared about getting through the mud unharmed) and to stay healthy than we were about our 3rd group game. So if they did designate champions we would have had a shot based on goal diferential or whatever the tiebreaker may have been. That's crap.

 

He did have a very good sense of being in control during the match.

In the match, there was a PK called that both myself and the opposing coach clearly saw as an "all ball" challenge. Spoke to Sherman the day after who was watching the game from the side of the field that the ref was on. It looked more like bodily contact on that side. You have to call what you see so I can't dispute that one.

There were two occations that he called handling that seemed like very weak calls. On the first one, I gave him a questioning look and he shrugged his shoulders in reply. The 2nd one really pissed me off. A player was airborn with arms relatively close to his side. A shot hit him in the bicep and he was called for handling just outside the PA. The opposing coach shook his head and (to me) questioned if the coach understood the rule. Goal scored off the freekick which essentially took us out of the tournament. As he came back to the center I asked what the call was.

"Handling"
"Intentional??"
nothing
"Intentional!??"
nothing
"Sir???"
tweet...<kick off>

I know it's all ITOOTR but it seemed that he made this call with zero-tolerance for intent. I'm just wondering if this is consistant with how he calls during the South Shore season or if he was judging it truely as intentional?

I thought he did a relatively good job with what he saw other than that...not the best I've seen this year, but clearly good enough to at MTOC.

Scott

 

Weymouth is in our H.S. league so we have an idea of how to handle them, although we do understand that they usually are better than us. Their high school squad has been ranked first in the state at times (we've played to 1-0 and 2-1 type losses against them over the last few years but have also been blown out). But to add more fuel to the fire we also had an incident where one of their parents attacked one of our players a few years ago after he injured a Weymouth kid. This would have been a fun hard fought game for us, win or lose.

 

I remember that...made big news in the Greater Boston area. O'D...out of curiosity, do you know how many players your team and Weymouth lose to club teams. The team I coach (PKH 18) is essentially the Silver Lake varsity candidates less the top 7 or 8 players who still play club ball. This makes the team essentially the Silver Lake bench with a few boarderline starters.

Do you feel that it helps your squad to stay together in the Spring, or does your team become stronger with your top players working out among several different clubs (with potentially stronger competition).

How were your officials? (had to make some ref reference to keep it in the forum)

Scott

 

I really have no idea the exact amount of players Weymouth loses but I'm sure they lose a couple. As for us, about 6 of our starters from last year played club ball this spring, plus a few of the kids from the bench. The only players on our town team that started varsity last year were our 2 senior captains who were too busy to be dedicated to club ball because they play other sports as well and were looking for a relaxed environment. We also have a few players who start for Marian and Keefe Tech on our town team but that isn't really saying much. The rest of us were all subs or just sat on the bench for Framingham varsity last year.

I think it's great that our top players play club ball, it keeps them focused throughout the entire year. The rest of us just play town ball because it needs no dedication at all. It's just fun to have a game every Sunday and it's a good way to stay in decent shape. We never practice or anything we just show up to the games and play.

As for our refs, I think that they did a decent job. Although our first game on Friday afternoon it looked like our ref was our age or even younger.

 

From the PO'd messages on the mayouthsoccer.org bulletin board, I'd say that they just gave everyone a t-shirt and sayonara. No comment on the front page of the MYSA website.

If any, my answer to the first question would have been, "Direct free kick". The referee was right not to comment further on the call.

In a recent OTH match one player kept screaming for "hand ball". At a break in play I had a short chat with him. "We are playing under new rules today. If you hear a whistle, it is a foul. If not, keep playing." Several of his teammates applauded.

 

That's the way I respond to the first question...I think I learned that one from you nat!

Scott

 

"If anybody is looking at me, I'm far away from Amherst."

From what I'm reading on the message board for Mass Youth Soccer website, it appears that the people who were the decision makers to cancel the tournament fled the scene before any of the teams arrived and left others at the site to get the wrath of players, coaches and parents.

Can anybody confirm. Were the referees who stayed the extra night compensated at all for their time? Refunds for the $5 dorm fee at least I'd hope.

Scott

 

Re: "If anybody is looking at me, I'm far away from Amherst."

This is not true.

My team was at the tents until about 9:30 and we talked to Sid Bloom (Mass Youth Soccer President, also from Framingham) for a few minutes about what the deal was. He said they were trying to prevent injury. We asked about rescheduling and he said he didn't think it could be done with trying to get teams and refs and organizers back for another day. The latter I don't agree with.

Also something I thought was weird...I stayed in a dorm room on the 17th floor of Coolidge and had a birds eye view of the entire Mullins Complex. At about 7:30-8:00 there were guys out painting fields 1 and 2. I went to Dunkin Donuts with a couple of guys for breakfast and the Weymouth U16 coach told us that MTOC had been cancelled. Of course we thought he was joking, I figured he knew we were playing the Weymouth U18 team, plus I had seen them re-painting the fields earlier. Low and behold we got to the field and our worst fears came true.