Refcation

Great weekend a couple of weekends ago. There is a somewhat remote assignor that I enjoy working for because the association really strives to take care of the referees that are traveling. So at the last minute, I reached out to her to tell her that I could be there with my daughter (my son is on a ref break, also called having a girlfriend. Side note, he will be back, he is going to need the money).

This assignor worked her magic and got me games for Thursday, Friday and Saturday and I was able to loop it to a vacation for Saturday through Monday. So I was able to work 8 games between Thursday and Saturday while my daughter worked two matches and mostly was stand-by. I enjoyed the time because when we were done, my daughter and I went to the movies one night, went to dinner and just had a good father/daughter time and someone was actually paying us to be there for a while (and work games or be standby for a while). Still, it was a good way to loop work that I enjoy with time away from the office and other distractions to spend one on one time with my daughter. It was worth more than all the reffing I did.

One note regarding that weekend that jumps on top of what I said in a previous post about kids no really knowing the rules. The other post referenced U15 girls and not understanding advantage. This new game was more telling than the U15 girls.

The scenario was a college showcase level U16 match (read, very experienced girls playing). Score is blue 2, white 0. White is pushing hard in the last 2 minutes of the match. Their strikers makes a great move on the defender, breaks free and heads one on one with the keeper. She then fakes out the keeper and sends her sprawling and is about to tap it in the goal when the keeper reaches out and grabs her foot on the backswing and knocks her down.

I blow the whistle, point to the PK and make sure the attacker is ok. Once that is settled, I walk over to the keeper and show her the red card as she was the last defender as the shot would have been a tap in with no keeper or defender. The blue team freaks out (not the coach at least) asking why that is a red card. I thought about it for a while, how do this girls not know what the punishment is for committing a foul that essentially can negate a goal? Have they never experienced that before? Have they had this before but the other referee did not pull out a red?

Since it is a college showcase tournament, there was a no playing down requirement in the rules and therefore, the blue team brought on their other keeper. White scores the PK and the game ends about 2 minutes later, 2-1. The coach for blue said that it was the right call, so I have that going for me. But what I question or ponder in this post is that the rules are really not well known or something else is amiss. I am not sure what. Why do you think there is a lack of understanding with some of the lesser seen plays in soccer? Is it the players or the referees? Is it because we just don't have that many DOGSO situations?

Funny thing is that the only two times I have shown red cards to girls has been for DOGSO. Never have I had violent conduct, two yellows for anything, etc. Boys on the other hand, the 2-3 reds I have shown them have all been for VC, two yellows or something along those lines. No DOGSO for them, but I do recall one game many years ago where a U11 travel game would have been DOGSO had I had the guts to red card an 11 year old keeper. I am sure it is somewhere in one of my old posts.