My first DOGSO

I began reffing in August/September of 2008. There have been many, many games. Hundreds for sure, after 7 years of reffing. After the almost countless games, I had never had a DOGSO situation (DOGSO meaning denying obvious goal scoring opportunity). And I had envisioned my first DOGSO as a clear cut, no bones about it foul or handling offense where the clouds would part and a ray of God's light would shine over the ball indicating the almost religious holiness with which this "call of calls" would be made. 

Many times I had dreamed of the call, and many others, I came close to making the call but it just wasn't enough. So when I finally got the call this fateful Saturday, it was less that the lofty image I had of that call. With those expectations, nothing other than a Suarez like handball against Ghana in 2010 would be enough. And while this was the right call, it did feel hollow in a way. 

The situation, yellow had dominated the whole game and had scored late in the first half. The second half had been more of the same, with yellow attacking and with about 10 minutes left, they figured that even with just a 1-0 advantage, they had the game in hand since purple had done little to deserve a goal. But a goal they got nonetheless with about 5 minutes left and so they last part of the game was going to be a lot of fun. Yellow pushed up hard to break the 1-1 tie and so with 30 seconds left, the "play" happened. Yellow pushing hard up the field got caught with few defenders and lost the ball in transition. A few decent passes and we have a fairly decent one-on-one between a purple attacker and the yellow keeper. Keeper comes out and attacker makes a decent move and gets away from the keeper by going slightly away from the goal. The keeper, either clumsily or brilliantly sticks her foot in between the legs of the attacker and brings her down just outside of the box. I blow hard the whistle and at that moment I realize what had to happen. It had not occurred to me until after blowing the whistle that we were in a 1-1 game, with 30 seconds left and with a foul that "could" be DOGSO. What led me to give the red instead of yellow was the fact that she was 75% beat (the keeper) and that the attacker had a good chance of scoring, even with her skill level. And a yellow would have been too little a price to pay. 

The aftermath was that I was quite flustered and so the poor keeper tried to explain to me that she didn't mean it and I think I just kept telling her to get off the field. The purple team missed the ensuing free kick and the game was over. 

The yellow coach at the end of the game basically came over to tell her keeper that she saved the game and that he was proud of her (and in a way, he should be) and to tell me that he thought it was the right call and that he would rather take a red than a 2-1 loss. 

My ARs backed me up on the call but it wasn't that moment of clarity that I thought my first DOGSO would have. Well, let's see what other first we can achieve in the coming weeks.