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.