Another first

This past weekend was the first weekend of State Cup. I had an interesting matchup on a rain soaked field that was full of clumps to begin with. The ball rarely rolled the way it should and aerial play was more the way to go instead of on the ground.

The takeaway was that there were a lot of challenges for balls in the air and it was a foul filled match. The away team immediately started complaining. The coach and the players (but strangely not the parents) were from the first minute complaining about this contact or another. Not 10 minutes into the game, I had to tell the orange team's defender (the away team) that he was "out of conversations" with me as I had already heard enough of him.

The two stories that I thought were interesting to take away from this match were these:

At midway through the second half, score is 1-0 for black and orange gets fouled. Black had committed more fouls but not by much. The foul is close to the orange coach so he asks me "how many fouls before we have a card? They are fouling a lot more than us and we both have a yellow card." He was right in that black had more fouls but it was not nearly what he must have been thinking. I had lost count when the foul count was 6-5 in favor of black. So I reply "Coach, the foul count is 11-8 so both teams are committing a lot of fouls. Not sure we want to card for every foul here on out." So he says half under his breath, "Foul counts? Who counts fouls?" as he turns away. It was kind of a gutsy move on my end, because I was not really sure what the foul count really was but I knew black had a couple more at least. That did quiet him down and left him to think that his team had also fouled.

The second thing was that during the first half, the AR alerts me to an orange player with incorrect equipment. The player had come on as a sub about 5 minutes ago and it turns out he had no shin guards. So I instruct him to step off the field and get his shin guards on. No card given at the time. He steps off, and his coach says to me, "But I don't want to sub him". I reply, "Coach, play with 10 until he is ready to come back in." The orange team takes a throw in and the ball eventually goes out again for another orange throw in. The player finishes putting on his shin guards and runs onto the field again as his teammate is about to throw the ball in. I guess he forgot about the whole being beckoned to come on thing and while I agree that the entering the field without permission is probably a silly yellow card to give in most cases, he earned one with me at that moment. I blew my whistle and said to the orange player "You have to wait until I tell you it is ok to come back onto the field." "Oh, ok, I guess I wasn't thinking." And there we have my first entering the field of play without permission card. Almost 8 years after I started reffing, we still have firsts.