Self Incrimination

Ok, I am going to try and add something funny, timely, or nuanced about the something that happens at the games I attend or ref.

The first one is going to be about self-incrimination. It happened to me at a fairly high level match in Richmond a couple of weeks ago. The play was white attacking and black defending. White midfielder lofts a through pass to a streaking attacker towards the top of the box. Keeper comes out and from my angle, it looks like keeper is going to grab it without a problem. Attacker makes a really fast run however. Defender that was lofted over is facing her goalkeeper and looks over her shoulder and appears to get in the way of the attacker. Keeper picks up the ball and attacker and defender collide spectacularly.

At first thought, I was thinking defender was WAY too far from the ball to make a legitimate play but at the same time, she didn't shift her position that much and so it could be a foul on the attacker. I run over, make sure everyone is ok and I was going to ask my AR who has a better "playing distance" angle what he thought. The defender then did me a favor by saying "but I was just shielding, she didn't have to run me over."

My AR confirms that the ball was at least 5-6 yards away at the time of the collision and so I call a foul in favor of the attack. Had she kept her mouth shut, I wouldn't have known her true intentions, though I suspected them and probably would have had the foul coming out instead of going in, but she confirmed that it wasn't that the attacker just bowled her over, but she intentionally got in the way.

Coach was not at all happy, but such is life.

Next time, subs and PKs.