Well, this was one of those weekends that all the others have mentioned in their soccer reffing blogs (I plan to link some after posting this) but I never had experienced myself. I was scheduled to do 6 matches this weekend (yeah, my wife was thrilled!). But on Thursday, I get an email that the three games on Sunday had been moved from one site, to three and at all different times. I email the assignor who basically said that she had no control over the changes in venues and she understood if I had to cancel. I did as the games were all over the place. So I was down to 3 matches on Saturday. I emailed one of the assignors and asked if he had any matches. He sends one U13 my way for Sunday, so I was back to 4 matches. Then Friday night, I get the email from my Saturday matches confirming the assignments, and I am not on the list, so I was down to 1 match, man could not catch a break!
I email that assignor and he replies that he sent the wrong spreadsheet and the new spreadsheet did have me, so I was back up to 4. In the end, I did 5 matches as the one on Sunday was preceded by being asked to AR during my son's match, where the scheduled AR no-showed.
So on to the matches...the Saturday ones were all ARs for the local rec league in U16 and U14 formats. There were a couple of close games but what really called my attention was the fact that the local league had boys that were half the size of some of the other team's kids. The interesting match was a 1-0 match that was decided by a shot that hit the goalie's hands, popped back and landed just past the goal line for a goal. I was glad that I had run to the end and was able to see for sure that the ball had gone totally in before being snached again by the keeper. I ran up the line and the center showed his appreciation after the match for my being in position.
On Sunday, I was pulled last minute while watching my son's match to AR for the match right next to it in a U12 match. The only thing of note was the coach of the Orange team that sounded like Bruno Tonioli from Dancing with the Stars. Out of nowhere he starts yelling at me that I had not seen a hand ball. I do not get coaches. He immediately made me angry and I told him in no uncertain terms that it was the last I wanted to hear from him in that manner again. He pipped down after that.
Then I ran to my center match about 30 minutes away and did an awesome match of a U13 game. The level and speed was not something I was expecting. White was whiny (the kids were, the parents and the coaches not so much). Blue was also asking for fouls that just were not there.
We had a 2-1 match in favor of white when at about 4-5 minutes into the second half, I realized I had not started the watch and so I did some math and used a technique I read about somewhere else. If you forget to start the time, announce the time remaining with plenty of time, like at the 15 minute mark, so that no one is surprised when you count it down from 15, 10, 5 and 2 minutes. I like to do that in a close game.
The other was that on a corner, blue heads it and the ball hits the crossbar, bounces down and only my lead AR could see if it was a goal or not. I stopped the match, asked the AR and he said that he was fairly sure that the ball had gone in. He was not in the best position in the world, but he was the only one who could have seen it, so I validated the goal. The game ended 2-2 but I had to card one of the blue players for retaliating on a non-call that he thought he should have gotten. Other than that, it was a good game, an eye opener for me. Hoping to do more of those as they were the full sized field and this was fun!
Next week I am on travel, so I am not sure when the next post will be, hopefully soon.
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