This weekend, I worked with my daughter, who is 13 and has been reffing little this season due to her regular soccer demands. She has a big trip to Arizona in the winter and she is trying to get a couple of matches in so she has some spending money for Arizona.
So we picked up a couple of matches of the U10 rec variety. I guess I have become too used to older age groups and to travel age groups. I had an issue with one player in my match who was clearly better than everyone else but he used a lot of grabbing and pushing.
At the start of the second half, he does an elbow to the ribs of an attacker right after I called a foul. So I have a quiet word with him, no pushing, elbowing, etc. I knew that this was rec and so my foul tolerance was very low. On top of it, it was slippery because of the mud and rain. In the second half, he has a mini breakaway and dribbles the ball a little too far ahead of him. The last defender collects the ball and he slides right into him. I blow the whistle hard and do the referee based "come here", not pointing at him but with both palms to me asking him to come. I say you must be careful, it is slippery and someone can get hurt.
Two minutes later, he slides into the keeper when the keeper collected the ball. I blow the whistle hard again, and say that this is the third time we are talking and show him the yellow card. He almost started crying and then seemed to calm down. He ended up scoring three goals after that but my daughter said she was somewhat appalled at how I handled the situation. She said that the U10 player should not have received the card and that I was treating him like a travel player. I can see her point. I have been doing mostly U14 and above. And I know I take it seriously, so the rec games are more about just making sure no one gets hurt as they are not trying to win the game at all costs sometimes.
Lesson learned, I am going to try and stay away from my youth matches for a while where it involves rec and U10 or below. I would have to do a bunch of games to get back into the rec groove. Unfortunately that means I won't be reffing with my daughter as much.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Assessment Match Tie in with DOGSO degree
As promised in the comments, I stated that I had a scenario in my assessment match this past weekend that shed some light as to my previous post and the question of DOGSO and is it is sliding scale.
Before we get too deep, I will have a separate post regarding the assessment match itself, what was said and all of that jazz. I will say that I passed (barely) and that it was not my best match. I felt like I was second guessing myself. And at times, it felt like I was standing beside myself on certain calls thinking, I wouldn't have called that when I just did. But alas, don't want to steal too much thunder from a future post.
In my scenario from the assessment, the game was 1-1 going late into the game, probably about 3-4 minutes left. Really tight, contested match, both teams trying hard to win and pushing up. White team gets a good chance that the keeper saves well and immediately creates a great counter attack for the yellow team. The midfielder traps the ball, brings his head up and sees a yellow attacker streaking down the opposite line and lofts a wonderful pass to him. Attacker gathers it, beats his defender and shoots far post where it hits the post and goes in. Wonderful goal, class play and definition to win the match essentially. No problems thus far. White goes to get the ball and yellow goes to celebrate with his teammates. In that, a sub from yellow comes on to the field to celebrate. This happens all the time in pro soccer. But this guy didn't come on 5 feet. He came out a lot more, celebrating and hugging the goalscorer. As I am running up the field close to my AR1, I ask him if he thinks the sub should get a yellow. He says no, not worth it. Let it be if he comes off fairly quickly. And he does, so I don't book him.
After the match (it ended 2-1 for yellow), the assessor comments on my discussion with my AR and asked me what I would get with showing a yellow to the sub that came on the field. I said that I probably wouldn't get anything but that he did come on to the field fairly quickly. He said that given the situation, the time left and everything else, the coming onto the field was trifling and should just be addressed with a quiet word instead of outright yellow card.
So it got me thinking of the whole degree of DOGSOs. I think that given the DOGSO situation from a week ago, there are degrees. There is nothing to gain from a red card if the game is already in hand. Now, do you still give it if you are being assessed? I still don't have an answer to that. I think the answer is this, if you are wavering between a red and a yellow and the game is a blow out already, no need to give a red, you won't get much of anything out of that. However, if you are in a blow out and there is an offence that requires a red because of SFP or VC, it is still a red. If it is always a red, it remains a red. If it could be a yellow, the go with the yellow. That is of course, unless you have more information, like say, the white team won the first game 4-0 and now is down 3-0 and they commit a possible DOGSO. In this case, the game is a blowout, but the winner of the matchup is not and probably could justify the red. Still a lot to think about when you have a couple of seconds to make up your mind. Perhaps that is something that you can cover during the pregame in case you actually have to face it during your game.
Before we get too deep, I will have a separate post regarding the assessment match itself, what was said and all of that jazz. I will say that I passed (barely) and that it was not my best match. I felt like I was second guessing myself. And at times, it felt like I was standing beside myself on certain calls thinking, I wouldn't have called that when I just did. But alas, don't want to steal too much thunder from a future post.
In my scenario from the assessment, the game was 1-1 going late into the game, probably about 3-4 minutes left. Really tight, contested match, both teams trying hard to win and pushing up. White team gets a good chance that the keeper saves well and immediately creates a great counter attack for the yellow team. The midfielder traps the ball, brings his head up and sees a yellow attacker streaking down the opposite line and lofts a wonderful pass to him. Attacker gathers it, beats his defender and shoots far post where it hits the post and goes in. Wonderful goal, class play and definition to win the match essentially. No problems thus far. White goes to get the ball and yellow goes to celebrate with his teammates. In that, a sub from yellow comes on to the field to celebrate. This happens all the time in pro soccer. But this guy didn't come on 5 feet. He came out a lot more, celebrating and hugging the goalscorer. As I am running up the field close to my AR1, I ask him if he thinks the sub should get a yellow. He says no, not worth it. Let it be if he comes off fairly quickly. And he does, so I don't book him.
After the match (it ended 2-1 for yellow), the assessor comments on my discussion with my AR and asked me what I would get with showing a yellow to the sub that came on the field. I said that I probably wouldn't get anything but that he did come on to the field fairly quickly. He said that given the situation, the time left and everything else, the coming onto the field was trifling and should just be addressed with a quiet word instead of outright yellow card.
So it got me thinking of the whole degree of DOGSOs. I think that given the DOGSO situation from a week ago, there are degrees. There is nothing to gain from a red card if the game is already in hand. Now, do you still give it if you are being assessed? I still don't have an answer to that. I think the answer is this, if you are wavering between a red and a yellow and the game is a blow out already, no need to give a red, you won't get much of anything out of that. However, if you are in a blow out and there is an offence that requires a red because of SFP or VC, it is still a red. If it is always a red, it remains a red. If it could be a yellow, the go with the yellow. That is of course, unless you have more information, like say, the white team won the first game 4-0 and now is down 3-0 and they commit a possible DOGSO. In this case, the game is a blowout, but the winner of the matchup is not and probably could justify the red. Still a lot to think about when you have a couple of seconds to make up your mind. Perhaps that is something that you can cover during the pregame in case you actually have to face it during your game.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Degrees of DOGSO
I promised it yesterday, so here it is.
I was pondering after one my matches this past weekend, where I was the center and my son the lead AR on this one incident that made me think of degree of DOGSO (denying obvious goal scoring opportunity). It was late in a match between while and red. White is up 5-0 with about a minute left to go in the match. Red has a rare attack going and the attacker makes a great move to split the last two defenders and as he is going to a one on one with the keeper, he is taken out by one of the split defenders.
To take into consideration outside of the foul itself, is that this was a tournament and that the white team with that result (a win was required) was in the final.
So as I call the foul, I look at my AR (again, my son) and pat my patch and my rear to see what he was thinking, yellow or red. He looks at me like I am crazy and pats his patch so I issue a yellow. After the game, he shared his reasoning:
- The game had been decided long ago, 5-0 or 5-1 was not going to change anything towards the game, the standings, or anything else.
- While it could have been DOGSO, the level of the play was probably a hard sell to justify a red.
What impressed me most about my son's reasoning was the fact that he had, at 15 years of age, thought through not only the situation at hand, but the overarching situation of the tournament and the needs of the game as well. Nothing would be gained for issuing a red and it would not change the result of that game. It was not a foul that by itself would get anything more than a yellow had it happened at midfield and that it was not needed, plain and simple.
In all of that, I was leaning towards red, but then after talking to my son, it made most sense to issue a yellow. In the end that white team lost the final 6-0 so it wasn't like the red or yellow would have had made a difference, but I was impressed by the level of higher level thinking of my son. Kudos to him and I am thankful I had him on the line to help me reason out a difficult situation.
So in conclusion, if the game had been a close one, 1-0 either way or tied, I probably would have issued a red card, because it was strategic and could directly have an influence of the outcome of the match and tournament, but in that situation, the threshold (here is that word again!) was higher to be a red, just because it wouldn't have made a difference in the winner of the match.
I was pondering after one my matches this past weekend, where I was the center and my son the lead AR on this one incident that made me think of degree of DOGSO (denying obvious goal scoring opportunity). It was late in a match between while and red. White is up 5-0 with about a minute left to go in the match. Red has a rare attack going and the attacker makes a great move to split the last two defenders and as he is going to a one on one with the keeper, he is taken out by one of the split defenders.
To take into consideration outside of the foul itself, is that this was a tournament and that the white team with that result (a win was required) was in the final.
So as I call the foul, I look at my AR (again, my son) and pat my patch and my rear to see what he was thinking, yellow or red. He looks at me like I am crazy and pats his patch so I issue a yellow. After the game, he shared his reasoning:
- The game had been decided long ago, 5-0 or 5-1 was not going to change anything towards the game, the standings, or anything else.
- While it could have been DOGSO, the level of the play was probably a hard sell to justify a red.
What impressed me most about my son's reasoning was the fact that he had, at 15 years of age, thought through not only the situation at hand, but the overarching situation of the tournament and the needs of the game as well. Nothing would be gained for issuing a red and it would not change the result of that game. It was not a foul that by itself would get anything more than a yellow had it happened at midfield and that it was not needed, plain and simple.
In all of that, I was leaning towards red, but then after talking to my son, it made most sense to issue a yellow. In the end that white team lost the final 6-0 so it wasn't like the red or yellow would have had made a difference, but I was impressed by the level of higher level thinking of my son. Kudos to him and I am thankful I had him on the line to help me reason out a difficult situation.
So in conclusion, if the game had been a close one, 1-0 either way or tied, I probably would have issued a red card, because it was strategic and could directly have an influence of the outcome of the match and tournament, but in that situation, the threshold (here is that word again!) was higher to be a red, just because it wouldn't have made a difference in the winner of the match.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Two topics for today
This past weekend, it was a lot of soccer, both my daughter's games and my own games that I want to discuss.
First, my daughter's game. In her game, some interesting things happening for a U14 match of relatively low level travel soccer. The topic I want to discuss is the concept of threshold. For a referee, establishing a threshold is important, because as the game goes on, you are measuring what is not a foul or trifling, what is a foul, what is a yellow and what is a red. And just like you kind of know what one thing is in your head, you are also going to be measured on that on the field.
Case in point, the center of my daughter's match calls a foul early in the first half where he then cards a player. The play was in midfield, attacker gets by the defender and then appears to trip on the ball. The referee calls for a foul, coach yells that the player tripped on the ball and the referee goes on to explain that the defender that had been beat nudged the attacker in the back, which caused her to trip on the ball and so she fell and therefore it is a yellow card. Fine, I disagreed with the call, but fine, 5 minutes into the game, that is your threshold, ok, let's play with that.
15th minute of the match, my daughter receives the ball, makes a nice move on the defender and send the ball forward for a pass. With the ball long gone on the pass, she receives a knee in the hip/back area and crumples down like a sack of potatoes. Referee stops play, admonishes the defender and does not issue a card. I know, it is my daughter, so I am not seeing it objectively, so there could be that.
I am not sure if I would have carded that foul had it been my center. But then I probably wouldn't have called a foul at all at the ball trip, even with a slight nudge that I did not see. But if your threshold is what we saw in the first play, then this play was at least a yellow, given the level of contact, the location and the position of the ball in relation to the contact.
Then comes the moment of truth, corner kick comes in and all of a sudden one girl holding her wrist, it was limp and looked off. She had tangled with the keeper somehow and video later showed that the keeper struck her in the wrist and ended snapping the wrist. The referee saw it because he blew the whistle and conferred with his AR to determine if the ball was still in play.
So he has his conference, comes back and points to the spot and then issues a yellow card to the keeper. My threshold meter just went crazy. I know there are times when you call something that the exact same fouls can either get a simple foul called, a foul with a conversation, a foul with a yellow or a foul with a red, but this was kind of off the charts. My only explanation is that his first yellow was an outlier, he didn't really mean to give the yellow or decided he had been too harsh after the fact. And yes, you sometimes have to do that, but it is hard to sell a call if you are constantly readjusting your foul meter. So be careful out there.
The other topic is degrees of DOGSO. I ran out of time to cover it today so I hope to be able to cover it tomorrow or in the next couple of days.
First, my daughter's game. In her game, some interesting things happening for a U14 match of relatively low level travel soccer. The topic I want to discuss is the concept of threshold. For a referee, establishing a threshold is important, because as the game goes on, you are measuring what is not a foul or trifling, what is a foul, what is a yellow and what is a red. And just like you kind of know what one thing is in your head, you are also going to be measured on that on the field.
Case in point, the center of my daughter's match calls a foul early in the first half where he then cards a player. The play was in midfield, attacker gets by the defender and then appears to trip on the ball. The referee calls for a foul, coach yells that the player tripped on the ball and the referee goes on to explain that the defender that had been beat nudged the attacker in the back, which caused her to trip on the ball and so she fell and therefore it is a yellow card. Fine, I disagreed with the call, but fine, 5 minutes into the game, that is your threshold, ok, let's play with that.
15th minute of the match, my daughter receives the ball, makes a nice move on the defender and send the ball forward for a pass. With the ball long gone on the pass, she receives a knee in the hip/back area and crumples down like a sack of potatoes. Referee stops play, admonishes the defender and does not issue a card. I know, it is my daughter, so I am not seeing it objectively, so there could be that.
I am not sure if I would have carded that foul had it been my center. But then I probably wouldn't have called a foul at all at the ball trip, even with a slight nudge that I did not see. But if your threshold is what we saw in the first play, then this play was at least a yellow, given the level of contact, the location and the position of the ball in relation to the contact.
Then comes the moment of truth, corner kick comes in and all of a sudden one girl holding her wrist, it was limp and looked off. She had tangled with the keeper somehow and video later showed that the keeper struck her in the wrist and ended snapping the wrist. The referee saw it because he blew the whistle and conferred with his AR to determine if the ball was still in play.
So he has his conference, comes back and points to the spot and then issues a yellow card to the keeper. My threshold meter just went crazy. I know there are times when you call something that the exact same fouls can either get a simple foul called, a foul with a conversation, a foul with a yellow or a foul with a red, but this was kind of off the charts. My only explanation is that his first yellow was an outlier, he didn't really mean to give the yellow or decided he had been too harsh after the fact. And yes, you sometimes have to do that, but it is hard to sell a call if you are constantly readjusting your foul meter. So be careful out there.
The other topic is degrees of DOGSO. I ran out of time to cover it today so I hope to be able to cover it tomorrow or in the next couple of days.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Almost a 6
I am one event away from achieving my Grade 6 State badge. This past weekend I worked in an Adult league match that was being assessed for the center and I was able to get my assessment added on to the match as an AR. So I have completed my training, my upgrade class, physical and two assessments (youth center and adult AR). The last thing remaining is my adult center. And I have to say that I am not really looking forward to it. It is the one thing I am least confident about, because I second guess myself all the time. And the speed at which the game was played is a little faster than what I do in a day to day scenario, but hope that the game I get is good and the men behave.
Haven't gotten it scheduled yet, but I am already nervous.
Haven't gotten it scheduled yet, but I am already nervous.
Monday, October 5, 2015
School of Excellece exercises
Today I am going to focus on a couple of exercises that were run at School of Excellence that made me think about how to better educate and motivate referees, especially those that were reluctant to learn a few new things.
The exercises that stuck with me were these:
-Left Hand/Right hand
-Sprint/color
-The diagonal
These are my names as I don't recall what they really were. Someone who has been to a national camp or somewhere else where these were run can probably give the real names, but I will describe them.
Left hand/Right hand was an exercise run on half a field, where lead AR and center ref have to work together to communicate what exactly the restart needs to be. Essentially the ball is played into an area close to the goal and some "players" try to screen the center and the AR from what is going on. What the center and the AR have to pay attention to is with what hand does the ball get bounced with by the person holding the ball (while the other players are trying to screen your view, by huddling close to the person holding the ball, or by getting in the line of sight). If the ball is bounced with the left hand, then it is a foul in favor of the attacking team. If it is bounced with the right hand, it is a foul in favor of the defending team.
Quite complicated because you have to look at many criteria, like where the ball was bounced with the left and right hand, as a left hand bounce inside the box is a PK and outside is a free kick. You have to be able to quickly look at your AR to see if they have any info that you don't have and pass that info along. It took me a couple of tries before I understood what the instructors were looking for but it was a fun exercise.
The second one was another disassociation type drill. You had to concentrate on doing jogs, sidesteps and other criteria until a color was shown, then you had to sprint to the corner of the color shown. You essentially jogged and sidestepped back and forth and when the time to sprint came, you were shown a color (yellow, black, green and pink) and that determined what corner of the sprint area you ran to. Again, you are focusing on one thing until you must focus on another.
Finally the diagonal is something that I touched on last time I had my SOE class and that was to mirror your two ARs and try to set up that triangle as best you can. So if AR1 ran up the Y axis if you will, you had to run alongside with him and still try to maintain your visual with your X axis AR. One minute of that running back and forth was brutal and my legs were on fire when I ran it. For starters, I would recommend 30 seconds instead of a minute.
And then train for your running test. I had to run the State 6 test with a time of 35 seconds for the run and a walk of 40 seconds. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I passed fortunately. And it got me to thinking (again) on how much easier things would be if I also ran more during the week instead of mostly on weekends. Ah well, someday, right?
The exercises that stuck with me were these:
-Left Hand/Right hand
-Sprint/color
-The diagonal
These are my names as I don't recall what they really were. Someone who has been to a national camp or somewhere else where these were run can probably give the real names, but I will describe them.
Left hand/Right hand was an exercise run on half a field, where lead AR and center ref have to work together to communicate what exactly the restart needs to be. Essentially the ball is played into an area close to the goal and some "players" try to screen the center and the AR from what is going on. What the center and the AR have to pay attention to is with what hand does the ball get bounced with by the person holding the ball (while the other players are trying to screen your view, by huddling close to the person holding the ball, or by getting in the line of sight). If the ball is bounced with the left hand, then it is a foul in favor of the attacking team. If it is bounced with the right hand, it is a foul in favor of the defending team.
Quite complicated because you have to look at many criteria, like where the ball was bounced with the left and right hand, as a left hand bounce inside the box is a PK and outside is a free kick. You have to be able to quickly look at your AR to see if they have any info that you don't have and pass that info along. It took me a couple of tries before I understood what the instructors were looking for but it was a fun exercise.
The second one was another disassociation type drill. You had to concentrate on doing jogs, sidesteps and other criteria until a color was shown, then you had to sprint to the corner of the color shown. You essentially jogged and sidestepped back and forth and when the time to sprint came, you were shown a color (yellow, black, green and pink) and that determined what corner of the sprint area you ran to. Again, you are focusing on one thing until you must focus on another.
Finally the diagonal is something that I touched on last time I had my SOE class and that was to mirror your two ARs and try to set up that triangle as best you can. So if AR1 ran up the Y axis if you will, you had to run alongside with him and still try to maintain your visual with your X axis AR. One minute of that running back and forth was brutal and my legs were on fire when I ran it. For starters, I would recommend 30 seconds instead of a minute.
And then train for your running test. I had to run the State 6 test with a time of 35 seconds for the run and a walk of 40 seconds. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I passed fortunately. And it got me to thinking (again) on how much easier things would be if I also ran more during the week instead of mostly on weekends. Ah well, someday, right?
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Was: More School of Excellence but now is Silly Parent
I watch some senseless TV and movies and one show that I got hooked on had a series of rules that one should follow in order to ensure things went well. One of the rules of the show was to never open the package, another was to never mention any names and so on.
This got me to thinking of some of the unwritten rules for referees. The first one should be "Always have your gear". As I come up with more of these universal referee truths, I will add them to my list, but always have your gear is pretty much up there.
I was going to start the post talking more about the School of Excellence and some of the exercises we had to run, I will probably do that tomorrow since I feel that what I am going to write about is more timely and a better story.
The story I want to share with you today was about the behavior of a parent in a game where I was not originally supposed to ref. I arrived early at the field where my daughter was supposed to play and on the adjacent field, I see a referee I knew and admired. So when I greeted him, he asked if I was available as the AR2 was nowhere to be found. So, following one of those referee rules (always have your gear), I went ahead and worked the game with him (in jeans as there was nowhere to change and no time to change anyway). I am sure I was quite a sight.
The center was the referee I admired and this was a fun and entertaining small sided game. Halfway through the second half, a parent disagreed with a call, quite vehemently. The center told him to calm down. Things escalated rather quickly and then the parent gets tossed. I won't go into details about the tossing because I try to keep things somewhat anonymous and would rather not have this incident easily identifiable.
What I do want to put on display here though is the fact that the parent appeared to do something that I don't think was very smart. I was the AR on the side of the parents and after the man got tossed, there was another person that showed up on the sidelines that looked very similar but with a different shirt and a different hat. Not sure if it was truly him or not as he was far away from me but it kind of looked like him. When the play took me to midfield (which of course was as far as I would normally go) I turned to one of the other parents of that team and asked if the parent was back. This team had traveled over 3 hours to play this one match and they were on the verge of losing the game (which they were winning handily) because a parent came back to the field after being tossed.
I watched while the parent I spoke with went to the alleged tossed parent and spoke to him and then escorted him to the parking lot. I don't know if what I did was wrong or if I should have informed the center at that moment, because I wasn't sure. At the same time, it seemed that the team dealt with the issue without having to inform the center. Not sure here if we should have stopped the game, inspected the situation to ensure if it was the parent or not initially (obviously, after the fact, it was the parent, otherwise they wouldn't have walked him to the parking lot) and then possibly abandoned the match. That has not happened yet and hope that is one first I never have to cross off my list.
Next time, more on the School of Excellence.
This got me to thinking of some of the unwritten rules for referees. The first one should be "Always have your gear". As I come up with more of these universal referee truths, I will add them to my list, but always have your gear is pretty much up there.
I was going to start the post talking more about the School of Excellence and some of the exercises we had to run, I will probably do that tomorrow since I feel that what I am going to write about is more timely and a better story.
The story I want to share with you today was about the behavior of a parent in a game where I was not originally supposed to ref. I arrived early at the field where my daughter was supposed to play and on the adjacent field, I see a referee I knew and admired. So when I greeted him, he asked if I was available as the AR2 was nowhere to be found. So, following one of those referee rules (always have your gear), I went ahead and worked the game with him (in jeans as there was nowhere to change and no time to change anyway). I am sure I was quite a sight.
The center was the referee I admired and this was a fun and entertaining small sided game. Halfway through the second half, a parent disagreed with a call, quite vehemently. The center told him to calm down. Things escalated rather quickly and then the parent gets tossed. I won't go into details about the tossing because I try to keep things somewhat anonymous and would rather not have this incident easily identifiable.
What I do want to put on display here though is the fact that the parent appeared to do something that I don't think was very smart. I was the AR on the side of the parents and after the man got tossed, there was another person that showed up on the sidelines that looked very similar but with a different shirt and a different hat. Not sure if it was truly him or not as he was far away from me but it kind of looked like him. When the play took me to midfield (which of course was as far as I would normally go) I turned to one of the other parents of that team and asked if the parent was back. This team had traveled over 3 hours to play this one match and they were on the verge of losing the game (which they were winning handily) because a parent came back to the field after being tossed.
I watched while the parent I spoke with went to the alleged tossed parent and spoke to him and then escorted him to the parking lot. I don't know if what I did was wrong or if I should have informed the center at that moment, because I wasn't sure. At the same time, it seemed that the team dealt with the issue without having to inform the center. Not sure here if we should have stopped the game, inspected the situation to ensure if it was the parent or not initially (obviously, after the fact, it was the parent, otherwise they wouldn't have walked him to the parking lot) and then possibly abandoned the match. That has not happened yet and hope that is one first I never have to cross off my list.
Next time, more on the School of Excellence.
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