Monday, October 17, 2016

Assessment and mistakes

Yesterday I did my assessment on a U17 boys match and while there was drama and a good match overall (a 2-2 tie), there wasn't much to talk about other than it was competitive and that the main criticism I received was that I was out of place in terms of passing lanes, etc. And yes, I did feel clumsy and kind of in the middle. I didn't go too deep on my AR's quadrants and that was another point of emphasis that I need to change.

However, the most interesting thing of the weekend was the match right after. I originally was not going to do the next match because I wanted the assessor to have time to give me good feedback, but when it was clear that there wouldn't be a center should I not accept, I accepted.

It was a fairly benign match between two U17 girls squads. Maybe 10 fouls all match. However, in the second half, I made a mistake that I need to learn from. White #55 was the one attacker who could generate some offence for her team. She is in the corner and there is a little bit of action where she probably was fouled, but my AR didn't indicate anything (and he was somewhat of a junior AR, so I wasn't really expecting a ton of help on foul recognition). The ball goes out to touch and he signals for a throw in for the red team. I felt like I lost the opportunity to call the foul and instead gave the throw in to the white team. Let's say it now, "don't correct a mistake with another mistake".

So on that throw in, the ball goes into the box, white chests in down and gets wiped out by a defender, very possible DOGSO, though the defender, fortunately did legitimately attempt to play the ball, so yellow card for her. But I felt like I had had a direct impact on the score. They convert the penalty and with 10 minutes left, they are up 1-0.

With 5 minutes left, red has a great through ball and the attacker gets knocked down inside the box. Not as clear cut as the other PK, but still, a PK nonetheless. White coach goes absolutely ballistic and I know the coach well, which bothered me because I thought he respected my judgement, but I think I know what happened. He wanted to have a conversation with me about the call, before the PK was taken. I later inferred that the reason he did that was to try to ice the PK taker. But I didn't walk over until after the PK (too late to change my restart, by the way) and the girl buried it for a final 1-1. It was interesting that the coach might have tried to get some gamesmanship in there, but then, perhaps if I were the coach, I would too.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Last School of Excellence class and another first

On the eve of my assessment this Sunday, I have a couple of comments to make regarding the 2 year stint I was in for the school of excellence. We held the last class a couple of weeks ago, during the first full weekend of all the leagues that needed us referees out there. One of the key improvements I hope to see for next time is to fit the classes into times when there is no refereeing going on that is needed. Perhaps hold a couple of sessions in winter, a couple in the middle of summer and one towards the end of a season. In fact, my suggestion would be something like late February, late June and early December. That way there is little chance of clashing with the start or end of a league.

The real problem is that the school of excellence in this first iteration was mainly focused on the younger kids that have a real chance of working higher level games. I see a couple of kids that are serious potential to be the next Mark Geiger or Kari Seitz but they are the minority for sure. Most of us there, young and old, are going to be Grade 6 at best and never progress from there. And I am fine with that for me, some of the younger kids with more ambitious goals may have to conform to that given the dwindling numbers you get at the higher levels. The younger kids that do some of the special tournaments that I can only dream of happen to work through Thanksgiving or some other major holiday and therefore the School of Excellence has to hold sessions when they are outside of one of those major tournaments. In this first go, it was structured to benefit the needs of the few over the needs of the many. I really don't know if I will sign up again for another two years. That would be eight weekends that I would have to attend and miss out on a lot of matches again. I will think about it long and hard, but right now, I am leaning towards a no.

On another note, I figured I would be done with all these occurrences that shouldn't happen. But the new rulebook has different opinions. One of the new rules is that if a player commits a foul or misconduct that is going to have him or her sent off, but the referee applies advantage on the play, the player is still essentially "gone" and therefore cannot participate anymore but you administer justice the next time the ball goes out of play or if the player becomes involved in active play. How often are you going to have this happen? Probably twice in your reffing career if I were to take a guess. Well, it so happens that this past tournament weekend, I was centering a match and there was one player that received a yellow for dangerously lunging at an opponent and while he made minimal contact, it was the third time he had done it, so out came the yellow. I had had a quiet word with him after the first studs up lunge with no contact. The second was more of a public "seriously, cut it out" admonishment and the third was a yellow card. In all of these instances, they had the potential of causing harm but they were still clumsy and ill timed. Had he really wanted to hurt someone, he could have done it easily. It was more of his way of trying to recover the ball. This was U17 boys travel soccer, so not the kids first rodeo for sure.

In the second half, he had calmed down quite a bit and figured he had decided to just play. But with his team down 2-0, he made a nice run towards the opponent's goal when a defender from the other team slides in and takes the ball away beautifully. The attacker though, left his leg down through the slide and therefore there was a little contact between the slide and the attacking player. The attacking player goes down and he looks at me with those "Well, are you going to call THAT?" eyes. I look at him and say "that was a great tackle, no contact so no foul". He then slams his fist on the ground and yells "I will show you a great tackle" and gets up and lunges himself again against an opponent with the ball. As he makes contact with the opponent, the opponent puts a great through ball to an onside attacker. I yell to the fouling player and the opponent that Number 5 White is gone and getting a red, do not retaliate and sprint to where the attacking play is happening.

Sure enough, the play does not develop into a goal or anything and the defense clears it up field. To White #5. The moment he touches the ball, I blow my whistle, show him the yellow for the tackle from 45 seconds ago and show him the red. In 8 years of reffing, I may have given about 12-13 red cards, and I do not recall ever giving an advantage on an eventual red card call. So I suspect that it will be another 8 years before I have this happen again, where the player becomes involved in play after being sent off but still on the field due to an advantage call. Has that happened to you?