If someone were to tell you that during a game, there is a good chance you would send that someone packing, but here is a scenario that I observed this past weekend that blurs the line from the obvious and I would like to know what everyone thinks about the situation.
While waiting for the game before mine to finish up, I was observing the matchup between two fairly even teams. Red vs Gray U13 or U14. I don't know what the score was at the time but it looked like Gray was up by a goal or two by how the teams were playing. There was a center and two ARs. One AR, on the parent side was not dressed but rather wearing jeans and a coat. He was an AR apparently because he called offsides but as I have said before, he was probably a STAR and was not really qualified to understand what was going on.
Anyway, the scenario is as follows. Red player gets by two defenders down the parent sidelines. Two other gray defenders come up to challenge him. I did not see the contact but something happened and the referee calls a foul in favor of gray. Red player backheels the ball towards the gray player but it goes a little too hard and off to the side and the referee decides that he is timewasting, whatever and decides to card the red attacker.
This is where I need your opinion. A parent on the sideline says something similar to the following "Don't worry about it, Doug, he's an idiot." He must have been the father of the kid that received the yellow. The center walked over to the parent and showed him a red card (which I know is not the way you deal with a disruptive parent) and sent the parent to the parking lot.
As a referee I have been called many things and only once have I had to send a parent packing, and he spoke to me and said some terrible things. This was more of a parent getting a dig on the ref via a conversation with his kid. Not sure I would have done what this center did since it was not a direct "Ref you suck!" And even with a ref you suck comment, I would be hard pressed to eject a parent given these circumstances. I do know that there had been no earlier confrontation between parent and ref since I was there before the game started. Anyway, if someone passively aggressively insults you, would you eject the parent? Let me know your thoughts. I want to see if I can set up a poll to capture the answers.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
More ref running and blog milestone!
To begin, let's commemorate the arrival of the 10,000th pageview on this site. For some startling reason, many people (and possibly many bots as well) have come to this site and in the past couple of days, we crossed over the 10,000th pageview. Interesting and that is about it. Not sure if that means anything significant, but hey, something is something.
On to the running. I am really liking my watch. Here is a link to the actual watch: http://nbmonitors.com/gps-enabled-monitors/gps-runner/
My wife got it at Target and for less than what the site states it retails for but not sure if it was a clearance item or what.
Anyway, more info on the running, in my two adult matches that I centered this Thursday night, I ran another 3.75 miles between the two matches, so that is more than I expected since it is small sided 7v7 soccer. Still almost 2 miles per match seems like a good workout.
For when this one wears out, I will probably get one that can be hooked into Google Maps. For now, I will try and do a match where I have both watch and iPhone on me to compare and get a map as well. That will be for this weekend I hope.
On to the running. I am really liking my watch. Here is a link to the actual watch: http://nbmonitors.com/gps-enabled-monitors/gps-runner/
My wife got it at Target and for less than what the site states it retails for but not sure if it was a clearance item or what.
Anyway, more info on the running, in my two adult matches that I centered this Thursday night, I ran another 3.75 miles between the two matches, so that is more than I expected since it is small sided 7v7 soccer. Still almost 2 miles per match seems like a good workout.
For when this one wears out, I will probably get one that can be hooked into Google Maps. For now, I will try and do a match where I have both watch and iPhone on me to compare and get a map as well. That will be for this weekend I hope.
Monday, April 8, 2013
So how much running does a ref really do?
In a previous post, I asked that question and had some answers but nothing from real experience. I have played with iPhone apps that monitor your movements but was not 100% convinced because they are hard to get to work when reffing.
My wife got me a New Balance GPS Monitor recently and so I decided to finally put it to good use. I tested it by running what I knew would be a mile and sure enough it registered 1.01 miles, so close enough.
Here is the picture of the watch:
This weekend marks the beginning of the regular soccer season here in the region and as such, I had quite a few matches to test this on. Here is the breakdown of my matches and the totals run:
My wife got me a New Balance GPS Monitor recently and so I decided to finally put it to good use. I tested it by running what I knew would be a mile and sure enough it registered 1.01 miles, so close enough.
Here is the picture of the watch:
This weekend marks the beginning of the regular soccer season here in the region and as such, I had quite a few matches to test this on. Here is the breakdown of my matches and the totals run:
- U16 Girls center (40 minute halves) - 3.98 miles
- High School Boys JV match (30 minute halves) 2.22 miles
- High School Boys Varsity AR (40 minute halves) 2.24 miles
- U16 girls AR (40 minute halves) - 2.00 miles
- U15 Boys center D1 (40 minute halves) - 4.5 miles
When it is all said and done, that is a lot of running for this weekend. To top it off, I played in an adult league game (and was more tired with that than I have ever been with reffing) as well as reffing the following adult league match, so you can imagine how tired I was this weekend. But still, the pain actually feels good.
Assessment Day
I won't make this long, but it all boils down to what match gets assessed to get your confidence up or not. My assessment did just that. I had a good game, with good ARs and while the teams were not puritan, they were not evil. Just enough dissent and calls that made for a good assessment. If they had gotten my match from that Sunday, it would have been another story. That match was a lot more complicated, between the parents, the players, the coaches, everyone was whining about calls. And I made some procedural mistakes.
For example, instead of going over and having a mini conference with my AR over the location of a foul (in the box or not), I asked him loudly while surrounded by players. I guess I was flustered and just wanted the slugfest to end. So fortunately, the assessment was one of the easier matches.
What was most interesting that weekend was the first match, where I was the AR. In the second half, with White leading 1-0, White had the ball and a player was fouled but he played through it. The center (who was a really athletic grade 8, but kind of nervous and always ran with his whistle in his mouth). In this play, White fought through the foul and the center correctly yelled "Play on!". However, when letting that out he also blew the whistle. It sounded, I heard it and three defenders stopped playing. The attacker did not and passed it to a team mate who scored on a baffled keeper.
The defense surrounded the center and he insisted that he did not blow the whistle. I went on to the field and conferenced with him so that he would not dig himself any deeper and told him (without any players present) that I had heard the whistle, and he needed to restart with a dropped ball as an inadvertent whistle. He did after much coaxing. And of course, in the last play of the game, the other team got a goal and tied it up, so the parents of the White team let me have a deluge of pleasantries. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.
For example, instead of going over and having a mini conference with my AR over the location of a foul (in the box or not), I asked him loudly while surrounded by players. I guess I was flustered and just wanted the slugfest to end. So fortunately, the assessment was one of the easier matches.
What was most interesting that weekend was the first match, where I was the AR. In the second half, with White leading 1-0, White had the ball and a player was fouled but he played through it. The center (who was a really athletic grade 8, but kind of nervous and always ran with his whistle in his mouth). In this play, White fought through the foul and the center correctly yelled "Play on!". However, when letting that out he also blew the whistle. It sounded, I heard it and three defenders stopped playing. The attacker did not and passed it to a team mate who scored on a baffled keeper.
The defense surrounded the center and he insisted that he did not blow the whistle. I went on to the field and conferenced with him so that he would not dig himself any deeper and told him (without any players present) that I had heard the whistle, and he needed to restart with a dropped ball as an inadvertent whistle. He did after much coaxing. And of course, in the last play of the game, the other team got a goal and tied it up, so the parents of the White team let me have a deluge of pleasantries. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Art and Science
It has been a long while since posting anything and I apologize for that.
Winter is not my favorite time of the year and did not really get to do much in terms of reffing or keeping in shape. It was kind of depressing actually.
But spring is around the corner and this last week we had a big tournament in the DC area with many of the top teams around the nation checking in. It was a great 4 matches I had this weekend with a lot of things to give to you. I won't write them all out now but I will share this.
On Friday, prior to the start of the matches, all those referees participating in the referee academy got together to discuss some of the finer things in reffing. One of the speakers, Alfred, went on to say something that really hit home for me. Basically, he stated that in the center, you are an artist. Trying to manage many things going on around you. Players, coaches, spectators, and anyone else within your sphere of influence. You are like a classical music conductor. You have to make sure that even if something is not going well, you generally move the music in the right direction.
As a AR, it is all about science. Was the ball in or not, was that offside. All that is a yes/no conundrum. There is little art, and more absolutes. You either have it right or wrong but there is rarely a gray area while in the middle, it is all shades of gray and rarely an absolute.
Just was interesting to hear the way he went about explaining it. It was a refreshing look at the way referees are seen. I really enjoyed his talk and was happy to see that the following day, he was the one who assessed my match. But more on that later.
Winter is not my favorite time of the year and did not really get to do much in terms of reffing or keeping in shape. It was kind of depressing actually.
But spring is around the corner and this last week we had a big tournament in the DC area with many of the top teams around the nation checking in. It was a great 4 matches I had this weekend with a lot of things to give to you. I won't write them all out now but I will share this.
On Friday, prior to the start of the matches, all those referees participating in the referee academy got together to discuss some of the finer things in reffing. One of the speakers, Alfred, went on to say something that really hit home for me. Basically, he stated that in the center, you are an artist. Trying to manage many things going on around you. Players, coaches, spectators, and anyone else within your sphere of influence. You are like a classical music conductor. You have to make sure that even if something is not going well, you generally move the music in the right direction.
As a AR, it is all about science. Was the ball in or not, was that offside. All that is a yes/no conundrum. There is little art, and more absolutes. You either have it right or wrong but there is rarely a gray area while in the middle, it is all shades of gray and rarely an absolute.
Just was interesting to hear the way he went about explaining it. It was a refreshing look at the way referees are seen. I really enjoyed his talk and was happy to see that the following day, he was the one who assessed my match. But more on that later.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
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/
There is a site that contains long gone websites and it has some of this old site's material:
http://web.archive.org/web/
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