Neptune Clinic

Yes, this happened in August and here I am in late November writing about it but I meant to write about this a long time ago and had my ideas laid out beforehand, but apologies for not getting it out sooner.

It was interesting being part of that Academy. I enjoyed it and recommend people try to get in and get feedback. It was a brutally hot weekend so other than my first match on Saturday where I was the center, all matches had a water break which shorted play even more.

But the match I wanted to focus on was the doozy of a match that I did at 8am on Saturday. It was an over 40 match so I thought it wouldn't be that good of a match. I knew one of the teams somewhat since they play in Northern VA but I wasn't prepared for the onslaught of goals. I guess because the field was relatively small and these guys knew what they were doing, it was a great match.

The game started out tame enough but escalated quickly. We had two quick goals, one from each team and then came one of those match critical plays. Yellow crosses the ball from my right side and as it bounces at the penalty spot, an attacker and defender are jostling for when the ball comes down again. The attacker does a spin move of sorts and the defender does the "sliding pic" or "pick" play that I used to do in basketball growing up and blocks him out but the ball is not there yet and they topple over. PK for yellow and black is angry when I also card the defender.

Later in the game, yellow up 5-2 and we had a moment where had there not been a precedent set by the pros then it would have been a hard sell. Yellow keeper collects the ball on a cross from black. Black is retreating out of the box and yellow keeper distributes the ball to a yellow defender but a black attacker sticks out his foot and collects the ball, passes to a teammate who scores on an empty net. Yellow goes crazy, and all I had to say was that it was exactly what happened in the final between Real Madrid and Liverpool not 2 months ago. Everyone knew what I was talking about and accepted it. Had that not happened, it would have been a harder sell.

In the end, Black pulled out a fantastic comeback to win 6-5 after being down 5-2 with 25 minutes left to play. The feedback I got was that I needed to anticipate more the play instead of reacting and that my substitution procedure was fantastic until the last sub opportunity where we lost track of one and yellow played for a short time with 12.

The rest of the clinic was good. I would certainly do it again if they continue to have it. I also had the center for the final of the open competition, in what looked to be one of the "marquee" matchups. However, the game was over almost before it started. One team was riddled with injuries and the other team jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first 5-6 minutes and then played keepaway. It didn't help that it was so hot that we had to do 2 water breaks per half.

More to come in the next couple of days now that activity for soccer has slowed down a bit (though I have a match on Sunday, where the high is going to be 37, not looking forward to it!).

Blast from the past

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and I do want to apologize for being negligent on posting. There has been a lot going on and I just haven't really had the time to get everyone caught up with all the stuff going on.

I will want to touch on a couple of topics in the next couple of posts:

- Correcting fellow referees' communications (sock issue)
- Comms used with assessment match (and fight)
- Talked out of a red card scenario (adult match)
- Comms review

All these will be in the next couple of days since the weather is terrible. Tomorrow I have my physical exam and really feel like it is not the best time (I have eaten way too much turkey in the last couple of days) and I will update if anything weird happens.

But for today, I have a bit of a blast from the past. If you look at one of the first posts in 2008, I mention my first center, which was a U9 girls match. In cleaning out some of the stuff in my study/office, I came across this:

This is from that day. I couldn't believe it when I came across it. I still remember a lot from that match. It was hot, the assistant coach of the losing team asking me why I called on of their players offside, and by now, I wonder where a lot of those girls are. Some probably ready to begin playing in college while others stopped playing long ago. What is funny is that this was my actual first center than I can recall, even before doing rec, I did a travel center (albeit a lower level one).

And to think that I haven't done one of these U9 matches in about 4 years. Ever since they added the no-heading rule and build out lines, I find them more complicated and haven't really asked to do any of them. It has been a while and now there is proof of that (10 years, darn that is a long time).

How much running...Round 3

The picture below is from this weekend. I worked an out of town tournament and had 5 matches on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. While I was tired, I felt pretty good after the Saturday matches.

This was about an hour before going to bed and so I ended up with about a thousand more steps than that when it was all said and done. 21.5 miles is quite a decent clip for one day. On Sunday, I did three more matches and then met up with the family and walked around the town quite a bit so I ended up with another 32k steps for Sunday. All told, 37 miles or so for the two days. By far the most I have done in a long time as I tend to not do so many matches per day.

Mike Newman

Everyone, sorry for not writing much lately, a lot has been going on outside of soccer that required my full time attention and as such I have been reffing a little less and additionally been less inspired to write about what I have to deal with.

But two days ago, I received the news that a pillar of the referee community had passed away, and it shook me to the core. I am referring to Mike Newman. If you worked the FPYC Father's Day tournament (a rec tournament that was always a lot of fun) or State Cup, you were bound to come across Mike. He was always around. He checked in on his referees and his emails were slightly sarcastic and always made me laugh.

I was supposed to work this last Father's Day tournament but a couple of days before my wife suffered an accident where she broke a finger on her toe and would need help getting around that weekend and I had to cancel. I knew it would be the last time I could work together and now I regret even more not having been able to help him that one last time.

He moved out to Vegas shortly thereafter and passed away on Tuesday. My fondest memory of him was during a U12 President's Cup match some many years ago. My daughter and I were supposed to work it with another referee and instead Mike shows up. This was probably in 2014-2015 and we do the match, he was a hoot with the parents as AR2 and after the match we come to the conclusion that the goals were actually the wrong size. They were smaller than the regular U12 small sided goals were supposed to be. I cannot remember exactly what quip he said, but it was spot on and funny.

Along with Harvey Finberg, whom also helped me be the referee I am today and who, like Mike, is now hopefully reffing soccer greats from yesteryear, it is hard to not feel a sense of loss. Mike, may you rest in peace.

Smiling

There has been a lot of soccer going on due to the World Cup. And it has been fun for the most part. The one thing that I don't care for too much is the VAR. While I agree that it adds fairness to the game, it is also ripe for misapplication. For instance, the Spain-Russia match had an instance towards the end of the match where one of the Russian players was grabbing the Spaniard while there was a cross heading into the box. They decided not to review when to me it looked like a clear PK.

Evidently, there is a system of criteria that we are not fully aware of. I suspect that the VAR is being used if no one saw the incident. But if the booth believes that the center, ARs or the 4th got a good look and communicated about it and still decided to not call, then they won't push for a review. At least that it what it looks like. Still not sure I like it.

As for the only real thing that I can say is new in the soccer world at the World Cup that is something I would like to call out is all the smiling that the center referees are showing. They make a call, and for the most part, they smile. It either conveys one of two things, I saw what you did there and let's be smart about it because I am on to you or to say that they have no idea what you are saying. Either way, it looks good. The optics of it from far away convey knowledge and is probably something I will add to my repertoire.

Reffing adults while tired

So you may have seen that there is a World Cup soccer thing going in Russia. I plan to do some commentary on that. Especially something like the Poland-Senegal goal that was unfortunate and the Colombia red card in the 3rd minute of play.

But today I want to talk about reffing when mentally tired. I don't seem to have much luck or I basically commit self inflicted wounds when reffing while mentally tired. For some reason, when I am tired like I was last week (the cause was that I had to go get someone at the airport at 2am and then work a regular day and then ref a 9pm match that night), I don't deal with situations well. I see myself as have a short temper and what is worse, I noticed I was falling into this pit, sending the game into the crapper and there was little I seemed I could do to get out.

There was no reset button and the teams tried to work with me, one team realizing before the other that I was in a foul mood and they didn't talk back too much. The other one, perhaps to no fault of their own, seemed to be more than willing to take my foul mood which I couldn't seem to get a handle of and tried to see how much fouler they could make it.

It boiled over, I issued a red card for foul language and I wish I would have had some techniques to be able to deal with my terrible mood. I did not do the game any favors and felt like I blew it. I wonder what you all have in your referee bag of tricks for when you aren't 100% on your game.

Injury and other musings

Had a good scare trying to do a fitness test for the PRO matches. I was doing the men's AR test and things were going splendidly. I had the CODA test (change of direction) and that one was fine. Then came the 6 sprints. 30 meters in 4.7 seconds. Ran the first 5 just fine. All around 4.3 or 4.4 seconds. Last one, the moment I push off of my left leg to start, I feel the back of my thigh go jelly.

I finish the sprint in 4.67 seconds apparently and then I had to talk to the trainer. He said that I probably tweaked my one of the three muscles in the back that we commonly call the hamstring and to keep things warm for my run as it probably would be ok if I let my adrenaline do the running.

That test, on a good day is grueling. Each lap is 75 meters of almost sprint speeds followed by 25 meters of walking, in 4 sections. Men's FIFA AR dictates that you need to run that in 15 seconds for the 75 and 20 seconds for the 25 meters.

I managed to run three laps before my body said that it was silly to continue trying. I had to return games I had for the next day and for high school. I thought my season would be over as hamstring injuries are all about rest and elevation etc. Not really anything you can do to speed things up.

Anyway, fast forward a week and I am getting antsy, as well as feeling fine. I did a bit of jogging and things felt just fine. I even ordered some compression sleeves for the thighs but alas the post office has found a way to lose the package, so no idea where they are at the moment.

Still, I take a low level game for my standards to see if I can actually run. It is for a tournament over the Memorial Day holiday. The match is a stand alone U14 girls final. Just as I arrive at the field (grass fields only at that location), the heavens open up and down comes a lot of rain. The tournament organizer suggests that all the matches slated to start at that time to talk to the coaches to see what they want to do (wait and play or declare themselves co-champs and go home).

My two teams are from about 100 miles away and 250 miles away, so the coaches decide to call it a tie and get on the road early. Great in the sense that I am going to get paid for essentially negotiating a truce but still no idea if I can really run for any significant amount of time.

So Tuesday rolls around and I was originally scheduled for a boys regional semifinal in high school without really knowing if I could run for 80+ minutes. One goal and 4.77 miles later, I answered the question, the leg is fine. Since, I have done one other high school match and the leg felt ok as well.

On the other match, it was just recently and it was a regional semi-final, so the losing school would be done for the year. I am AR1. Game is a high friction, high intensity match with one team pushing hard for the opening goal and the other team playing some counter mixed in with a lot of fouling.

Start of the second half and the home team scores and is dominating. Many yellows are pulled for the visitors and  they cannot really break through the defense. In one of the rare mistakes, the home team loses the ball in transition and the visiting midfielder loops a long pass to two streaking attackers. One attacker going down the middle of the field is onside while the other off close to my touchline as he was slow getting back.

The looping pass kind of gets held up a bit thanks to the wind and the rain. If there had not been any elements to contend with, the ball would have gone to the central attacker who was onside, but since it did get held up, it floats more towards the offside attacker. Sure enough, the attacker runs onto the ball, makes an absolutely fantastic volley that lofts over the keeper and into the net. Enormous celebrations ensue until they see my flag up. It sucked having to call such a nice goal back.

What was worse was that there were perhaps five minutes left on the clock when that happened and so they realized that their chance of tying had pretty much slipped away. The level of hate directed at my call, at me and to referees in general was next level. To the point where we had to essentially get out of the stadium quickly because it seemed like there was a bit of mob mentality brewing.

Next time, the place to set up is not near the exit. It is let everyone else leave and then go to your car in a group. But, again, at least the leg was fine. So at least I have that going for me.

My next dilemma

Having discussed yesterday my thoughts on handling and offside, let's keep the comments coming because until I get a definite answer (and who knows, the next time I work with someone that is a 4 or during another assessment match, I will make sure to ask).

My other uneasiness on law interpretation is the on the concept of playing on and waiting for the advantage to materialize. A couple of years ago, in a competitive U15 or U16 match, I had a situation where one team is attacking and towards the top of the penalty area, a foul occurs but I play on (some of the details are gone so I am making it generic).

Anyway, defender commits a foul that I play on because the ball goes to another attacker who takes one touch and her second touch is somewhat bad and the defender clears it out. Time elapsed was probably about one second to less than two. I blow to come back to the foul and the coach gives me a hard time because they got the advantage, it was taken with the first touch and the second was beyond being "called back".

Same thing in my assessment match that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and that I promised I would elaborate on one particular issue the next day (and then didn't because life happens).

That scenario is similar. The team that was down towards the end of the first half when a through ball is played to an attacker. The defender, seeing that it is a great opportunity for the other team, tries to grab the shirt of the attacker but he breaks free and is streaking down the side, angling towards the middle of the field. I yell play on loudly. After about 3-4 touches and about 3-4 seconds have elapsed, he makes a bad touch and that same defender that tried to grab him clears the ball upfield and the attacker takes a dive. Eventually, the ball goes out and I card the defender for attempting to break up a promising attack. The fouled team could not comprehend how I could play on, give a card and not go back to the foul. I tried to explain that in my opinion, the attacker had indeed taken advantage of the play on, and that by the time he made a bad touch, there was no "advantage didn't materialize" to go back to.

Side note on that: the team was almost all comprised of people from Jordan and they kept saying that in Jordan, you go back to that. So perhaps in other countries our colleagues hold advantages longer?

Anyway, that is the scenario. What is the point of no return on an advantage? One touch, 2-3 seconds, the attacker getting out of the jam? And of course, it goes without saying that skill level comes into play as well. But what constitutes the end of the "advantage"? Let me know in the comments below or mull it over as an icebreaker when you don't know what to talk about during a break with your next crew.

Rethinking a previous post

It is more than a hypothetical. It has happened to me, once as a center referee back in 2017 in a Adult Open match (there is a post here somewhere about it) and now a couple of weeks ago in a youth DA match. It is the dilemma of whether handling by a defender can reset offside and allow that initially offside player to legally play the ball.

If you recall in the adult match, it was a play that was debatable (at least from what I recall all this time later) whether it was intentional or not as it was withing what I call the deflection range. Close enough where one might argue that it was a deflection. However, I remember that I felt that the defender was making himself bigger and took the risk. That ball, after the handling offense, went to a player in an offside position, my AR raises his flag and the player slots it in the back of the net.

We talked it over and decided to go with the handling offense. At that time, I considered it not intentionally played by the defender but making himself bigger. Now that I think about it more, that is terrible reasoning but it is what I decided at the moment.

This one happened in a DA match, U18 girls. The match was already 3-0 in favor of the team that had the chance to score. They are attacking in a 2 on 2 situation. Both defenders are in line and the attacker off the ball is in an offside position. The girl with the ball slots it between the two defenders and the defender closest to the pass tries to somewhat cover her chest but the ball travels about 10 yards. With her arms outstretched, it hits her arm and goes to the attacker who scores.

At halftime, the lead AR said that he thought the ball was intentionally played and the center said, but it hit her arm and so if the attacker was in the offside position, he would have called the handling. And we got into the discussion again of whether offside can be reset with a handling call.

The center argued that any other foul, like a tackle, would be called and not offset the offside. To which I countered that essentially, all other fouls are against an opposing player, not the ball or the game itself. At that time, I still had the thought that handling does reset offside, as it is intentionally played by the defender, played on as advantage and therefore no offside.

Anyway, we managed to confuse ourselves, we agreed with each other's points of view and then we finished out the match to an 11-0 drubbing.

So a couple of days later, I am an AR for an assessment match and the assessor said that he thought that you had to call the handling but that he would look into it. But he never followed up and so here I am, possibly still thinking that handling can reset the offside or even worse, I am right, and there are many others that are wrong, so perhaps I have to spread the word like the gospel among my brethren.

Before I go and make "Handling before Offside" T-shirts, let me know what you think in the comments. Do you believe offside is reset if the defense commits a handling foul before the ball gets to the offside positioned attacker? Do you have a position paper or some other documentation that hints to the answer? If either of the above questions pique your curiosity, please let me know. After all, we want to make sure that this darn blog climbs out of the doldrums of soccer referee blogging leaderboard.

Top 20 Honor

Well it looks like we did it, after almost 10 years of being certified and blogging about the troubles and the benefits of being a referee, we have been recognized as the one of the top 20 blogs for soccer referees.

Here are the details in the link:

https://blog.feedspot.com/soccer_referee_blogs/

But basically, we are 15th (out if 16 mind you) in terms of popular soccer referee blogs. Frankly, I am amazed that we are in it at all but hey, I am not going to complain.

I have added the Top 20 Badge on the side of the blog and if nothing else, take a look at some of the other fine blogs for referees there are out there. There were only a couple I knew about and most of them were new to me, so they may be to you as well. Enjoy.

Only with Comms

Had an interesting match last week. It was a regular, run of the mill girls varsity high school match. Home team is up 2-1 and about 4 minutes left. Corner for the visiting team who is pushing up hard to tie the match. I am AR2 and the corner is happening in front of me while I stand as the trail AR.

The corner is taken and it hits off the near post and back to the girl who took the corner. She crosses it again and the ball is pinballing in the box. What is interesting is that my mouth started yelling into the comms "double touch" to the center referee, but I know my brain didn't consciously think it, so it was almost an involuntary uttering.

After the match, the center said that he wasn't even thinking double touch and thank goodness for the comms. It is not something you see every day and it was funny to hear the kids ask us about the call after the game. Coaches and players alike thought we were calling offside and were yelling that you can't be offside on a corner (which they are correct, but we weren't calling that).

In the end, this teaches us two things, even as trail AR when everyone is the other half, you can still pay attention and contribute and comms really did help with a match critical call because if I had seen it without comms, it would have been very tough to convey that to the center referee in a timely manner.

Maintenance assessment match

As you may know, here in Virginia, if you are a State referee grade 6, you need to get 2 assessments a year (July 1 to June 30) in order to maintain your grade. You also have to do the training and pass a physical fitness test (which consists of 10 laps around the track in 20 segments of sprinting and walking).

One of your assessed matches can be on a U17 or above and the other has to be an Adult match. The youth match was done early and I was getting worried that the adult league that currently is the only one in the area that is tough enough to be considered valid for assessments was not publishing matches.

So it was surprising to me when I get an email from the assignor that I had 2 games on Sunday. One was an AR and the next was my center. The teams were well known to me and we were all set. I email the person in charge of assessments and within a day, I have my assessor and we are ready to go. One of my ARs was also going to use my center match as her upgrade AR match. So great, more bang for the buck.

Fast forward to Sunday. Dreary, dark, dank and depressing. Around 4pm, we get an email from the league that the 9pm matches are cancelled. Does not affect me at all, but the impending torrential rain we are supposed to get gives me concern that perhaps no one is going to show up for the 7pm assessment match.

As we arrive to the field around 4:15, the center for the first match mentions that he is a 7 as well and was wondering if it wouldn't be too late for him to also get assessed as an AR in my assessment match. We call the person in charge of the assessments and he blesses the additional assessment. So at that point, the 7pm match, right around the time a crazy amount of rain is scheduled to come down, is now a match where all 3 officials are going to be assessed for maintenance or upgrade purposes.

There was a delay in getting the field ready and about 10 minutes before kick off, we get an email that the 7pm match is cancelled due to weather. What a dilemma because we all need the match. So I call the assessor to see if by any chance, they are close by and can make our 5pm match, our assessment match. He says yes, the coordinator says yes and we kick off 5:30 with me in the center and both ARs being assessed. Thank goodness we were not able to get the field ready and that the players were ok with starting a little later.

It turned out to be a good match, even though it was rather lopsided at the end. My ARs were spot on with their calls, I had a great play on that resulted in a yellow and a very easy second yellow in the second half that made the match level difficult.

I will expand on the "play on yellow" in the next post as this one is rather long as well as some other stuff that is blog related as I have run out of time for today. More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading and commenting everyone.

What I learned just recently

This is a bit of a tongue in cheek post. But it harps back to the misconceptions that people have. These last couple of weeks I have been doing a bunch of tournaments. A lot of games for sure (in cold and ugly weather as well). But taking it all in stride. I don't think that I have ever had such a busy end of February and start of March. In it, there were 2 things of the many that seemed to stick.

The first one was that a pass that does not go forward means that the receiving end of the pass cannot be offside. So in essence if player A and B are on the same team and A is in front of B, with B controlling the ball and A is in an offside position, if the pass from B to A does not go "forward" then A is not offside even if he comes from an offside position.

So I got that in a high level U17 match. Player passes the ball in what some of us call negative (that is the ball is played sideways, but slightly backward, almost like a lateral in the NFL. Player A comes from a clear offside position and collects the ball. My AR raises his flag and I blow my whistle. The team that was called for the offside insists that since the pass did not go forward but rather slightly backward, that is it not offside. Sorry I said, I would check it later but as far as I knew at the moment, it is offside.

Perhaps I am wrong and the ball indeed has to go forward but I find that hard on the AR since many times, they don't see exactly how the ball gets to the attacker in an offside position, they just see that they were in an offside position, a pass was made and the offside player is the first to make contact with the pass. So I will have to look it up, but I think I am right on that one.

The second was also related to offside but pertained to a deflection by the offense. This one happened to me as an AR in a high school match. The defense had the ball and was going to clear it. I am AR on that side and as the defense clears the ball, an attacker steps in front of the clearance. The ball deflects off of the attacker to another attacker who was making his way back and was in an offside position. He makes contact with the ball and turns to the goal for a one-on-one. I raise my flag and the coach on my side goes ballistic.

"He is on because it was a deflection."

I explained that the defense gets to use that argument (deflection vs intentionally played) but the offense does not get that same treatment (or should it?). It was evident that the player that was hit by the ball was not intentionally trying to play it to the attacker, it just happened. But the attacker, at the time his teammate was hit with the ball, was in an offside position. Therefore, my understanding, is that he is offside. Again, if I am wrong, I want to hear about it in the comments.

Finally, a really funny one. Team Red is down 2-1 and attacking. Coach of the losing team is on my side, I am AR1. They are attacking towards me and the attacker gets by a clumsy challenge by the white defender. In the process of defending, the white player loses his shinguard. He gets up and steals the ball from the attacker (while his shinguard is on the ground).

Coach immediately loses it and states that a defender cannot play the ball because he lost his shinguard. That he is not allowed to touch the ball at all and that it should be a free kick for red. I told him that there was no such rule but he kept going on and on about him not being allowed to play the ball until the shinguard was back in its place. I would agree that if the play had stopped because the ball went out of bounds, I would probably hold up the restart if I saw the white defender with the shinguard in his hands, but during the run of play, play on.

All I am going to say is that you learn something new every day. Or at least, you are challenged to the point where you have to think about it. Let me know what you think with you comments and hopefully we start getting some warmer weather. 

High school vs USSF vs College

For those that don't do comments too much, here is the link to the current differences between the three sets of rules. I have not looked over all of the differences so I won't comment but I did want to thank the 2-3 of you that read my post and sent me an email almost immediately. I did not think I had that level of a following!

https://www.nfhs.org/media/1018270/2017_soccer_guide_-interscholastic_revised.pdf

Another interesting thing from this weekend was the snow we had on Saturday evening. I had 3 matches and at the start of my center which was kicking off around 2, it was coming down nicely on the turf field. By the end of that match, the field was more white than green and it was coming down hard. To the point that I had to shield my eyes when running down the pitch.

When we were about 10 minutes from kick off for the 4pm match, it looked like there was a good couple of inches of snow and the lines were gone. No 18, no touch lines. We had to put down cones and discs to see where the midfield was and where the top of the box was for each side. I went to talk to the tournament director and said that the fields were unplayable. To which I was told that it was not my call. And yes, to a point, it is not, until it is, you see. Unfortunately the center for that match was more accommodating than I would have been and played the match in full.

The field right next to ours ended their match at halftime of the 4pm kick off. And the field behind us actually played their 6pm match as well (while the other 2 fields's matches were cancelled). Go figure.

Still, not your everyday field conditions. Players were going in hard as it was a showcase tournament but they really couldn't showcase much. I had to send off one player in my match who slid so hard that had he made contact with the person with the ball in earnest, he would have broken a foot or leg (and the perp was already on a yellow).

After the match he came to me and insisted that he got all ball. I didn't agree completely. He did get ball, but got leg in there as well and I did mention that I always want them to control the body and that he played in a manner that could have caused injury given the conditions. But the truth of the matter was that regardless, the game should not have been played, because it was on a field that was already somewhat dangerous, or was getting there quickly. And yes, I could have stopped play at any moment when I felt it was unsafe. It didn't really feel like that until we were ready to kick off the next match when I came to the conclusion that it was ok to finish the match but the field was not ok to start a whole new match. No one got hurt but I did call the assignor and said that in my book the 4pm games were being held on a field that was not playable. He suggested that we talk to the coaches and see if they were ok (and unfortunately, they were).

Back in school

Conditions on the ground dictated that I could and should return to school to do High School games. This season, I return to the fray. I have taken my test, watched the rules clinic online and attended the on-site meeting that they had for high school referees. I haven't found a good (and updated) list of differences between the rules in USSF soccer, and that of NFHS rules.

The ones that I know of off the top of my head are the throw in, where USSF is a redo should the ball not actually go in play (high school you gave up your chance), the yellow card requirement of coming off in high school and the injury to the keeper where a trainer needs to come out.

There are other differences, like OT PKs but that is more of a procedural thing. If any of you have a good updated list with all the differences, it would be great for someone like me that has exclusively been doing USSF based rules for the last 3-4 years. Thanks in advance if you do find a list out there and I will update this post should a good one be found.

Match that changed everything part 2

I will have to speak in code a bit so as not to offend certain parties, but we had a meeting regarding the issue of the match. And I also talked quite a bit with my daughter about her desire to stay out of the refereeing world.

First, there was a meeting about the match in question. I was asked to provide more detail and to explain my perceptions of what was going on, what I heard and what I didn't hear. Not something that I get to do every day. In the end, the panel is going to decide within a couple of week whether the was enough for referee abuse. If I hear anything regarding that, I will update you.

With regards to my daughter, I dug a little deeper. Because I have mentioned this many times, I enjoy more than almost anything else in my refereeing world the ability to spend time with my kids doing something I love. My daughter was more of a referee-for-money type of person and so she said that while she was genuinely scared at the time of the incident, she also had decided before then to not recertify for 2018. So it was not the match that caused her to end her career altogether but rather a factor in the decision to do something else other than ref during tournament season.

So in the end, there was one. I have a 6 year old that says she wants to referee but that is 6 years in the future, so not sure that will stay like that. But I will say that I am happy that we were able to get to the bottom of what happened, and that there was a meeting to decide whether referee abuse happened.

And then next 4-5 weeks are going to be absolutely crazy. I have tournaments starting next week all the way through the end of March. I guess it will be good money, but I am sure going to be tired as well. Hopefully I will have some time to let you in on what happens if something merits it.

Finally, I am about to purchase a comm system. Full details when I get it and when I try it out. Gotta have that tax deduction!