Interesting call

I am not going to bore you with the details of some of the games I have been assigned lately, a lot of U13-U14 girls and boys matches that are either very light or overly aggressive. But mostly, U13 girls, just moved into a large field, is like watching paint dry, they move the ball well enough, there is little contact and goals (rare as they are) are only scored within the 6 it seems. It has to be my least favorite age group.

There is one call that I will bring up during my center of a U15 girls match. The defender has the ball on the left flank and pressured by an attacker. The defender is facing her own goal and a teammate towards the penalty spot is calling for the ball. She passes it to her but then the keeper tells the teammate to back off and then proceeds to collect the ball with her hands. I blow my whistle as a passback but the gold team swarms me saying it was not intentional. And I had to think about it for an extra second. The intention to pass to the general vicinity of the keeper was clear, though she was probably not the intended target at the time of the pass, but I have to think full well that the keeper knew she was not allowed to pick it up. So in so many words, I explained it to the girls.

I knew I made the right call when my AR backed me up, but even more so when the coach of the team that was penalized did as well.

I have a couple of more stories from these last two weekends, just not enough time to detail it all out just now.