Heat of the moment

And hot it was this weekend. Six matches overall, 2 on Satuday (a U10 girls and a U9 boys that were nothing spectacular). I did almost red card a boy in the U9 match. Two fouls both fairly similar and heavy handed on the same attacker. I carded him on the first and probably should have done the same on the second but they were already down 4-1 and the second one was a penalty on top of it, so I could not bring myself to yellow card the player again.

On Sunday, things picked up a little more. Two U13 girls matches, one as a center and one as an AR. The center one started off very interestingly as the blue team attacked and had a goal I had to call back because they literally ran over the keeper. They then scored first with a little less than 4 minutes to play in the first half but in the span of 2-3 minutes, yellow got two goals and then sealed it with a 3-1 win.

In the U11 boys matches I had that afternoon, I could tell that they were starting to try and play the ref, as one boy seemed to have missed a shot as a defender went to challange him and he went down yelling he was hurt, etc. and that the defender had fouled him. I had to tell him that I did not see a foul unfortunately. A couple of minutes later, with the game 2-1, the same attacker and defender go at it but this time I see the defender take out the legs in the box, PK for white who is down 2-1. The keeper gets a couple of fingers on the ball and it hits the crossbar and falls into his hands. On the counter, the blue team gets a PK of their own (stupid -as in excessive- foul right on the line of the box and they do convert, to make it 3-1 and game over.

All in all, some of the benefits of this tournament were that we got drinks and food included and that we were paid right after our last match. My total was just shy of $200. Not bad with these benefits.