My daughter, playing in a U10 tournament this weekend had a referee that could not get one call right. Not one call. The referee was a younger rather than older, probably around 25. She did not make one offside call, and there were plenty. She did not call one single foul on any team, and there were at least 10 possible calls, 3 absolute calls. She missed 50% of the throw ins (she guess on all of them). She did not move much out of the center circle.
At the end of the match I wanted to walk over to her and tell her something. Either something positive or something like, please do not referee again at this level until you feel comfortable doing rec. I am all for putting people up to the challenge, but she was way out of her league. I really just wanted to ask the experts what you thought, and what can be said, if anything, to someone who has a terrible game.
To finish up the story, I did not go and say anything to her. My daughter was hurt towards the end of the match, and my responsibility was to her more than to the referee, so that was that. The following morning, we had the pleasure of an early game when I see her walking down from her car and I cringed. Fortunately, she went to the field right by ours. It was a U11 Boys match that was warming up. Needless to say it was an unmitigated disaster. She had both coaches on the field at one moment, yelling at her, at each other. The parents of both teams yelling at each other and the field marshal (a parent with a bright vest, normally) trying to control everything.
The anger towards her had been bubbling up in the first half when she did not move much and proceeded to make the same mistakes she did previously, bad calls one way or another. The moment of truth, or the moment all heck broke loose was when she whistled for a foul where the attacking team had to take the kick. She was having the team take a free kick inside the box. Picture it, a free kick that is not indirect, about 2 feet away from the 6 yard box. Finally, one coach stepped onto the field and reminded her that a free kick of that nature is a PK or indirect. She changed it to a PK. The team scores but the other coach is now on the field, and though I am not sure what happened, but she suspends the match at halftime. She sits by the sideline for 15-20 minutes until another referee shows up and he does the second half. She leaves. I wonder what happened exactly but somehow it is a mounting of errors, from the assignor, to the parents, to the coaches and especially the referee herself. If I catch her again, I will try to offer some advice, but it is hard to approach someone to tell them how terrible they are and then offer some tips. Any suggestions?
