When not to switch ARs

I am sure this has happened to you before. An AR that you need for your match that is supposed to start on-time is being held up on another field because the other field is running behind. Had that happen in a very competitive U19 match. The ladies were waiting, we gave the AR another 5 minutes but he was still centering his match and no one knew exactly how to long remained.

I recruited a parent, gave him instructions as to what to call and what not to call (call nothing, don't call basically everything). But I made one mistake that I hope to correct for the next time we encounter such a thing. I never told him how I wanted to handle the baton exchange if you will. So 5 minutes later, my AR starts running towards our field, taking off his red jersey and putting on his green jersey. As he prepares to enter the field, my AR runs over to him while the ball is in play on his side and starts trying to do the exchange. At that moment, the attacking team makes a great through ball pass to an apparently onside attacker from my perspective and puts it in the net. Defense goes ballistic.

Coach that just got scored on, to his credit, told the girls to quit yapping and just play their game since he was the one that had pushed for a stand in while the other AR made his way over to our field. The rest of the game went fine. Good match up between a skilled team and another that was just one level higher.

The lesson learned here for me was that when we are going to make the switch back to the 3 man system instead of the 2 plus club AR, is to STOP the match, make the switch and then restart. The other lesson learned is to cover the changing of the guard process to the club AR so they don't try to pull one at the exact same time that the attacking team is trying to put one in the net. But it is always an interesting thing, especially when it becomes something that you had not considered before.

Site gone

One of my links on the right hand side is no longer available. The Corsham Ref site had some great links and had a plethora of handy referee game cards which are no longer available. Sorry to see them go because in the end what we need is more material and a site like that contained some decent material. Will have to replace the link but for now, don't use it.

There is a site that contains long gone websites and it has some of this old site's material:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100402094554/http://www.corshamref.org.uk/

Realization

I have been bombarding you all with posts lately but I feel the need to update this blog as the last couple of years I have been quite busy (and I am now as well but feel that this is a form of therapy to clear the mind to work on something else).

The other day while pondering what matches to take for the upcoming holiday weekend, I came to a realization. The situation boiled down to what to take and how to juggle the other responsibilities of one's life.  In this area, Columbus Day tournaments abound. There is a big tournament for WAGS (the girls league I mentioned in a previous post) as well as others. In that WAGS tournament, one of the assignors reached out and asked me if I was willing to do some games and then be part of an academy for referees that weekend as well. At first, I was jumping for joy because it meant a lot of matches, a lot of training and so I told him to sign me up as I was game.

Then I had to do something that I was not going to enjoy. Since my son and my oldest daughter play on that weekend, I was going to have to take one or the other to a series of games (most tournaments guarantee 3 matches per weekend). So I called my mother and asked if she could cover for me if the matches coincided. She said yes and as I was filling out the application for the referee academy, it struck me. I really would rather watch my kids play than ref. I don't think I had had that feeling before. I was actually shocked at myself because of my internal motivations, because I believe that I am a good referee and because I love reffing, but I came to the realization that I love watching my kids play even more.

So I closed out my application, and sent the assignor a message that I was not going to do matches for him. I probably burned part of my bridge with him, but I have to level with myself in that, right now, watching my kids play is right up there with reffing. And that to really move up in the ranks of referees, you really cannot be tied down too much as it is somewhat of a fluid occupation, especially at the grade 6 and above level. Having kids who play every single weekend that I ref makes it that much harder to be good at both. And while my whistle may look at me longingly, I want my kids to be able to say that their father was at almost all of their games even more than I would love for someone to say that I reffed a great game. It is a hard decision and realization but one that I am happy with. This time last year I had reffed double what I have reffed up to now. And you know what, its ok.

Why the name?

The other day I received an email from someone regarding the naming convention of the blog. So let me peel back a little bit of the info of what makes me who I am. I work in the IT field for my Monday to Friday job. In that world, you sometime have to use software applications to help you figure out what type of machine you are dealing with. In the early days of my IT career, I used to use an application called a port scanner that allowed you to figure out what was on the other side of a network connection. So for example, if I were scanning a server and I saw port 1433 and 1434 open, I knew it was a Microsoft SQL server. If ports 135, 137, etc were open, it was possibly just a PC, etc. The one I used the most was one called Yet Another Port Scanner (YAPS for short) which had been named because it was not the first one but it was a darned good one. So when I had to come up with a name for this blog, I had seen that I was not the first soccer referee to begin blogging about his experience in the trenches, hence the name Yet Another Soccer Referee.

Here is the link to what is now YAPS:

http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=19

Anyway, as they say, and the rest is history. But now if you want to use a port scanner, I normally rely on Angry IP, though I have to admit I have not had to port scan in a while.

Recert

I have to figure out how to change my profile as I just realized that it said that I was an 8 going for a 7. Well, actaully now I am a 7, trying to maintain a 7, so out of date for a bit.

As for the actual recert this weekend, boy were there a lot of questions related to kicks from the mark and if someone were to get hurt while participating in them. Too many questions related to that. Other than that, it was an interesting class. A little about the new dropped ball rule (can't score on the first touch of a dropped ball, either one way or another). Some expansion with the advantage rule, to include things like double touch that rolls to an opposing attacker who has a clear 1 on 1 with the keeper is not penalized but rather given an advantage.

In general I liked the class, and was happy to get a 93 in the State exam. For some reason here in Virginia we lump all the 8, 7, 6 and 5s into one class and then to make things easy for the instructors, they hand out exams that are for the state (6 and 5). Still, it was a lot of questioning on proper restarts, etc. And as always, the notorious shin guard thrown at the striker.

The funniest one was where an attacker named Fred is on a 1 on 1 towards the keeper, a defender trailing the play yells at him, Hey Fred, and he is startled and loses the ball. What do you do to the defender. Even though it is not a true "foul" it is a red card for denying the goal scoring opportunity. I originally did not think that was the case, but it is according to the instructors. All in all, a good class.

And the physical was like it was last year. I run faster since there are other people that help me pace myself, so it is easier to do those than when I run and practice at home. So one more year as a 7 if I pass my maintenance assessment match...that is this month, so we shall see.

Pre game hydration

Let me preface this post to tell you that I am not a doctor, I don't know much about doctor related things, get queazy at the first sight of blood, cannot look at things like broken bones or anything like that without wanting to throw up.

That said, this weekend, after working the u11 girls match I mentioned in my previous post, the next match was a match between a team that had 8 players (in an 8v8 match) and another team who had 10 kids (so they had 2 subs). I figured that the team with 10 would find a way to win towards the second half because the other kids would be really tired. The result of the match was not what I wanted to report on, it is the situation that happened during a game thanks to what happened before the game.

To start, the game ended 5-4 in favor of the team that had 8 kids. The final goal happened when they had 7 on the field. So very interesting and powerful that they were able to get the victory with everything stacked against them. 

During the first half one of the kids looked off on the team with no subs. He would run but almost in a trance. At one point he went down (with about a minute left in the half). He was tended to and did not return until the start of the second half. I asked my ARs to look at him well and to ensure that he was not concussed or something similar and to be able to help me figure out what was ailing him. In the second half he went down again, after a very clumsy foul he committed and grabbed his head. He then sat up and said he was really dizzy. I thought, oh crap, here is a kid with a concussion and I let him play.

The coach came on again and I told him the kid was done for the day. This was while they were up 4-3. The other team immediately tied the match and with 1 minute left, the goalkeeper of the 10 man team committed the blunder of all blunders and allowed a silly goal in for the win. 

For the dizzy kid, what I thought was a concussion was really a power drink (Monster I believe) drunk 15 minutes before game time. This was the first time the 11 year old had consumed an energy drink to boot. While again, I am not a doctor, it seems downright dangerous to consume something that is going to make your heart race right before going out and running a lot that also makes your heart race. Fortunately nothing happened, but it did raise the awareness for me. He looked off, he was dizzy and if I had known, I would have kept him out sooner. But the parents must have been happy, they won, didn't they?

The other side of travel soccer

Saw two really interesting things out on the field this past weekend. Wanted to share them both because even though they do not really relate to reffing explicitly, they do show you that you can pick things up quite a bit and learn from it.

First one is more of a funny thing. As you know, I have kids who play soccer. A LOT of soccer. Both of my oldest play travel soccer and have been playing for some time now. The world of travel soccer is anything but transparent and this weekend was a good example of some of the shennanigans that go on in the world of travel soccer as a whole.

There are a couple of leagues in this area for girls, WAGS and ODSL. Many clubs play 2 teams in the WAGS league (their top two teams, as it is more competitive) and then the rest of their teams in the ODSL league. The deal is that kids should not play in more than one game and normally, playing for one team on any given day, bars you from playing for another team that very same day. But there is a loophole of sorts that does not explicitly bar you from playing in one league and then turning around and playing in another. But it is not something that can easily be captured and even less reported unless something happens like what you will read below.

This last Sunday, I took my son to his soccer match 45 miles away and on the way back, we realized that my daughter's match that was about to start was on the way back home. My wife had driven out to take my daughter. We met up at the field, watched the game and then went home. In the PM, I went to ref my 2 matches at the local field and was working on one of the matches from my daughter's age group. She plays on the B team (WAGS) and I was reffing the C team that plays in ODSL. And when I am checking the girls in, I see that they have 2 kids from my daughter's team on their roster, hand printed. Now these two kids are not the best players, nor are they the worst. So it is not a ringer situation here, but it bothered me that this had been arranged behind closed doors. My daughter was never asked if she was available to play. It was the team manager's kid and her close friend. And I found it typical of the dealings that come with playing travel. You set up your kid to do things and take opportunities before putting them out to the general public.

I spoke to the coach (who also manages my daughter's team) why this was not communicated and that my daughter would have loved to play had she been given the opportunity. He stated that he asked the manager to arrange it and the two girls that showed up were the two that she had said were available. Well, yeah, if you don't extend the invite to anyone else and keep the info to yourself, then yes, those would be the only two available.

It is akin to working at Best Buy or some other retail place and not putting out that flat screen TV on the floor because you know the moment you put it out there someone will snatch it up as it is on super sale, so instead, you buy it yourself. I know it happens, but it was just dumb luck that I caught them red handed. So now I know what type of manager I am dealing with, one that does not look out for the interests of all the girls equally, just some. And this is all thanks to reffing that let me catch them in their scheme.

This went too long for one post to do another, but the next post is related to player safety and when to tell a kid (and his parents) that their child is not longer welcome on the field (and saying it without using a red card).