Of Tournaments and Fauna

Interesting stories from this week’s tournament. I will break it down in three distinct stories: a) The Tiny Ref, b) The Late Ref and c) The Non Ref

So for starters, this was a tournament weekend, a closeout weekend as the season is winding down to a close. There are a couple of tournaments scattered throughout the DC area, and this one was fortunately, closest to home. In the past, the assignor who gives me matches for this tournament (and the others that he assigns for) has always used me as a backup ref at the site where my son's team plays. And I have never had to actually sub in for a ref. I was once given a match by the site coordinator back in March of this year, but the assigned ref showed up in the nick of time. But I digress...

The Tiny Ref

As you can imagine, this pertains to a ref that did my son's U10 matches. He was shorter than some of the kids on either team. I am not sure if he knew all the rules or if he had a whistle, because he really only used it for the kick-offs and then for half time. I do believe he did not call a single foul until 3 minutes before the end of the match and it was a questionable call in my eyes. But the fact that he must not have been over 13 made it the most interesting thing. I am a firm believer in having referees train but during tournaments, parents paid a decent chunk of change to have their kids play special matches, and though he was not terrible, he certainly did not give the impression he really knew what was going on so of course, parents were not happy. And in the end, if parents are not happy, they take their tournament dollars elsewhere. I saw a lot of frustration over the reffing in general because of the inconsistancy of the whistle blowing. My guess is that if you do not like the officiating, you will probably not be back next year for that tournament. And some of the blame I have to lay it on the assignor who may have blindly given the matches to a 13 year old.

The Late Ref

On Sunday, I had an early start. The first match was to begin at 7:30am. It was cold and fairly dark still when I arrived at the field at 7:05am. The other AR arrived with me and we began chatting. The fields looked terrible. They were Bermuda grass that I later found out, turns yellow and basically looks dead upon first frost of the season and that is why they looked bad. To top it off, there were several field markings, all in while, against the pale yellow of the Bermuda grass, which made an AR’s job all that more complicated.

By 7:20, our center had not arrived, so while the other AR checked the teams in, I ran over to the ref tent and let them know that we may need another ref for our match in 10 minutes. 5 minutes later we get someone coming over. He introduces himself and he is not the scheduled ref, but rather the backup. While we are standing there, he does manage to confirm my suspicion that he is rather cocky and eccentric by some of the comments he makes. He said things like “This level is so easy compared to the semi-pro that I normally do, but oh well…” (we were about to do a U15 boys Elite flight level match, so it should not be that easy).

Right before the start of the match, another ref lumbers on to the field and we come to find out that he was the ref that was supposed to be here to center the match originally. He and the eccentric ref get into a little discussion and in the end, eccentric tells him “I do not care if you got here late. It is my match now because it is no longer your match. You can watch the match from the sideline or the ref tent, but get off my field.” And here I thought we were a community of brothers.

So the match starts and the eccentric ref is one of those chatty ones, with strange calls, late calls and everything else we are taught not to be. He becomes the star of the match and at the end, when we go over the final score and the cards, he states he gave 5 yellow cards during the match. I saw only one.

For the next match, the shunned referee comes on to the field as my AR, still complaining about the match that he was supposed to center. But I notice one weird thing, he did not have a US badge on his uniform, but rather a FIFA badge. I asked him if he was still certified (his badge had a small 98 on the bottom, so I thought he was not still certified for FIFA but I had to ask). He said he was from Cameroon and had received his FIFA badge there and worked the African Cup of Nations as an AR (I could not verify this on Wikipedia as they did not list the AR’s names, only who centered each match and I am not going to dig that much further). Still, I am not sure he should be wearing a 10 year old FIFA badge instead of the current US badge.

The Non Ref

This one was more entertaining than anything else, but while on my break I was watching the action unfold on two fields when all of a sudden, one of the ARs starts to wiggle his flag like crazy to indicate that something was wrong. Then I look over and a deer was sprinting across the field on the half where play was not occurring. I do not think that the center on that field even realized since it happened so quick. Then the deer leapt over some chairs and bound up the hill to the other field, where she squeezed in between the goalpost and the keeper (who again, did not realize until the deer was long gone) before jumping over a ditch, in between cars and over a fence to disappear into the woods behind the fields. Not often do you get that type of close up with wildlife when reffing (unless you consider some of the parents wildlife).

This coming week I am doing my 2010 certification and hope to have some more information on what we are going to be focusing on this coming year. Come to think of it, I have not had to do the certification for three seasons now, because I received my in August 2008, which already gave me the 2009 badge.

In the coming weeks I will have that as well as the ref seminar in January and a high school training session. So this winter should not be a quiet one.