I watch some senseless TV and movies and one show that I got hooked on had a series of rules that one should follow in order to ensure things went well. One of the rules of the show was to never open the package, another was to never mention any names and so on.
This got me to thinking of some of the unwritten rules for referees. The first one should be "Always have your gear". As I come up with more of these universal referee truths, I will add them to my list, but always have your gear is pretty much up there.
I was going to start the post talking more about the School of Excellence and some of the exercises we had to run, I will probably do that tomorrow since I feel that what I am going to write about is more timely and a better story.
The story I want to share with you today was about the behavior of a parent in a game where I was not originally supposed to ref. I arrived early at the field where my daughter was supposed to play and on the adjacent field, I see a referee I knew and admired. So when I greeted him, he asked if I was available as the AR2 was nowhere to be found. So, following one of those referee rules (always have your gear), I went ahead and worked the game with him (in jeans as there was nowhere to change and no time to change anyway). I am sure I was quite a sight.
The center was the referee I admired and this was a fun and entertaining small sided game. Halfway through the second half, a parent disagreed with a call, quite vehemently. The center told him to calm down. Things escalated rather quickly and then the parent gets tossed. I won't go into details about the tossing because I try to keep things somewhat anonymous and would rather not have this incident easily identifiable.
What I do want to put on display here though is the fact that the parent appeared to do something that I don't think was very smart. I was the AR on the side of the parents and after the man got tossed, there was another person that showed up on the sidelines that looked very similar but with a different shirt and a different hat. Not sure if it was truly him or not as he was far away from me but it kind of looked like him. When the play took me to midfield (which of course was as far as I would normally go) I turned to one of the other parents of that team and asked if the parent was back. This team had traveled over 3 hours to play this one match and they were on the verge of losing the game (which they were winning handily) because a parent came back to the field after being tossed.
I watched while the parent I spoke with went to the alleged tossed parent and spoke to him and then escorted him to the parking lot. I don't know if what I did was wrong or if I should have informed the center at that moment, because I wasn't sure. At the same time, it seemed that the team dealt with the issue without having to inform the center. Not sure here if we should have stopped the game, inspected the situation to ensure if it was the parent or not initially (obviously, after the fact, it was the parent, otherwise they wouldn't have walked him to the parking lot) and then possibly abandoned the match. That has not happened yet and hope that is one first I never have to cross off my list.
Next time, more on the School of Excellence.
1 comment:
I think you did the right/cool thing here; you applied the Common Sense Law. The other parents understood the gravity of the situation and this was a much better way to handle it.
I was getting grief from a parent during a State Cup game (I was the parent-side AR). The center overheard some and jogged over to me during a goal kick. He very loudly asked if I was having any problems... message delivered... to which I responded "I will let you know if I do." The ref asserted his authority, "protected" me, and nothing further had to be done. You saved all the 3 hour drive kids and their parents from misery because of one parent. Well done.
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