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?
5 comments:
That's got to be handled at the assignor level. Anything you try to say or do, one way or another, won't make much of a difference unless you have time to get to know that ref and know what her deal is.
I know in my league, we have our assignor and there's a separate position for investigating "bad refereeing" and handling coaching complaints. Usually that person will inform the assignor if a certain referee needs to be pulled aside, demoted, or even removed. It might be more worth finding out if you have a mechanism like that and using that.
Soccer can be an unforgiving sport especially in the earlier age groups with the way parents and sometimes the coaches just don't know better in how they treat young and inexperienced referees. And this seems particularly aggravating because it sounds like she's working solo and without the benefit of real AR's. Even for experienced "good" refs, U10s can be difficult to work given no ARs and having to worry about offsides.
It sounds like there was no certified A/Rs for this tournament? Odd (unless its a rec tournament).
As you know, being a CR with 'club volunteer' or no A/Rs makes calling offside difficult unless it is really, really, REALLY obvious. I let coaches and players know that when I'm in that situation - if it's obvious I can call it, but if it's subtle, its not being called.
That being said, @wildcard78 is correct. Contact this ref's assignor. This ref needs to be an A/R in a low level game. Or 4th.
I know in my area the Assignors are trying to put together more on-field mentor clinics. The idea is to bring new (generally young) refs to a game to watch it as if they were Assessors. In your case, if you can arrange this,
do so. Maybe even one of your games. :)
Otherwise, this will be yet another ref we lose. Sometimes it has to happen, but often it shouldn't.
If you are USSF officials read:
"Policy 531-11 Part3 Subpart C" Code of Ethic for Referee.
"I will be loyal to my fellow officials and never knowingly promote criticism of them".
In your case call assignor.
Contact the assignor with specific information and the nature of your concerns.
General complaints do not help. As a fellow referee I've had to this 2 or 3 times at tournaments. I've typically let the assignor know what level I think the referee can handle and always suggest they put eyes on them for themself.
This post sure brought out some comments. Thanks.
I think the general consensus here is to let the assignor know but do not publicly beat up the ref on the spot or talk to them 'in the heat of the moment'. I appreciate your comments for sure.
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