Thursday, May 3, 2018

Only with Comms

Had an interesting match last week. It was a regular, run of the mill girls varsity high school match. Home team is up 2-1 and about 4 minutes left. Corner for the visiting team who is pushing up hard to tie the match. I am AR2 and the corner is happening in front of me while I stand as the trail AR.

The corner is taken and it hits off the near post and back to the girl who took the corner. She crosses it again and the ball is pinballing in the box. What is interesting is that my mouth started yelling into the comms "double touch" to the center referee, but I know my brain didn't consciously think it, so it was almost an involuntary uttering.

After the match, the center said that he wasn't even thinking double touch and thank goodness for the comms. It is not something you see every day and it was funny to hear the kids ask us about the call after the game. Coaches and players alike thought we were calling offside and were yelling that you can't be offside on a corner (which they are correct, but we weren't calling that).

In the end, this teaches us two things, even as trail AR when everyone is the other half, you can still pay attention and contribute and comms really did help with a match critical call because if I had seen it without comms, it would have been very tough to convey that to the center referee in a timely manner.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you have comms for a High School game? Never in Florida...

Do referees buy/pay for them or are they provided by the State High School Athletics Association or the schools?

Unfortunately, FHSAA are very busy making rules changes with little impact on the game (a big one for next year is that now the home team will have the "dark" colored uniform instead of the white uniform).

I enjoy your posts - keep them coming.

YASR - Yet Another Soccer Referee said...

A couple of the referees I work with have their own comm set. I plan to get a set soon as well. This one was from the other AR and he brought them just in case. I really like them in dual referee matches that we see a lot in JV games.

But to answer your question, it is not provided by the association.

And yes, they are discussing the change where white will be part of the visitor's gear instead of the home team's. I think it is fine, just like the NFL is mostly.