Locking up and my own crew

Two distinct things to discuss today. First, this weekend, my son played in a tournament down in Richmond. Since the weather has been a major issue, it was until the last minute that they confirmed that his team's bracket was going to be playing.

In the second game that they were playing in, we had an older referee who seemed nice, knew what he was doing but had a lot of trouble keeping up with 14 year old boys who play an advanced level of soccer. In one play towards the middle of the second half and with the game 2-2 a series of calls showed that perhaps he needed to be closer to see the action. My son's team is defending and the other team creates an attack close to the AR's side, player goes down hard. Referee blows his whistle and then jogs, and jogs, and then jogs some more to the spot of the foul. 40 yards away and he called the foul. He asked the AR to confirm who committed the foul so he could card him. AR replies that there was no foul, attacker tripped on his own legs and the defender cleared the ball to a corner. Referee then states that he saw a foul but did not see who did the crime. AR walked up to him and basically talked to him quietly and said something that talked him out of calling the foul.

Then my son walks over to the referee and says something snarky "Fouls are kind of hard to call from the center circle unless they happen at the center circle". He earned a yellow for that comment and he deserved it, but he was also right.

5 minutes later our referee is again in his favorite spot on the field and a passback offense happens. He is at midfield and not wide, so there are probably 5-6 kids in his line of sight. I doubt he saw it at all. AR (not the one who talked him out of the foul) clearly sees it but I guess he locked up, he looked at the center and the center did not appear to be wavering to call anything so he did not flag it. What made it frustrating is that the keeper did not actually pick up the ball but rather slid and bobbled it. The attacker instead of just popping it into the wide open goal started complaining to the referee and so the chance was lost.

On another note, my daughter just got certified, so now we are 3 certified referees in the family. I will give her a year to do the rec level before we attempt to do some low level tournaments, but I am thinking that for an assignor, this has to be good, knowing that he can have a crew of 3 referees. 2 of them would be good in the center of most U12 or U13 matches. Something to think about to see how I can use this to help both of the kids get more experience.