Monday, April 28, 2014

Dark Arts - Club version

This weekend I did not ref much but my daughter had her first couple of games, where she was an AR for U10 rec. That was fun and interesting at the same time. At halftime I had to tell her to focus on one thing and one thing only, the 2nd to last defender. She was trying to remember to do all the things she was supposed to do and it was getting in the way of just focusing on the basics. She seemed to get things going when she was working only on one thing. Then she added one thing after that and by the second match, she was doing fine.

But that is not what this post is about. This weekend, in my daughter's game, we were playing at home and I was just a parent for this one, no ref garb. We were setting up the the field when the team manager comes over and asks me if at U12 teams can still use guest players. I immediately thought that they couldn't in WAGS because the results matter now. It is not a seeding season, it is the season where results count, so stacking kids is sort of a no-no, I thought. Just to be sure, I called a person who happened to be in front of a PC, brought up the rules of the competition and we found out that indeed, you can have guest players at U12, but only from a lower seeded team at the same club (so if you have a Division 1 team, and Division 3 team and a Division 5 team, the D5 players can guest on the D3 or D1 team and D3 can guest for D1 but D1 players cannot guest down to D3 or D5).

The other rule is that they can only play in one WAGS game per day, so if they played in their own team's game that day, they may not participate in another game regardless. So you might ask, how did you know whether these players that were coming in as guests were from the higher or lower ranked teams on the same club? Quite simple actually, most teams allocate jersey numbers to teams when they are created. Something like this: A team gets 01-20, B team gets 21-40 and C team gets 41-60 for example. We knew that this team was their B team. Well, all the girls who were on the official roster (not the ones written in at the last minute) played with numbers in the 20s and 30s. The 3 guest players? You guessed it, 8, 10 and 2.

We had caught them trying to cheat and add A team players to a B team match. A clear violation of the rules. This is where the team manager and I disagreed on how to proceed. I was of the idea to let them play and then we are declared the winners (but you have to file a protest), she wanted to confront the manager prior to the start of the game. She decided to confront the manager, who initially pulled out an edited version of the rules of the league that did not contain the verbiage in question (about A team players not being allowed to play down, so they knew they were cheating) and when our manager showed her on her cell phone the correct verbiage, she backed down and scratched the players out.

The game ended 2-2 and that tells you that the three guest players were there to pad the B team. I really hope that we can come down hard on cheating like this because it stinks that people try to cheat and it is something that referees need to know about because it goes on more than we know. We normally arrive at the time of the game and handle the things within the field, but since they ask us to certify we saw a roster and player cards as well, we probably need to know in more detail under what circumstances players can or cannot play. What this team was hoping for was that the other manager wouldn't notice or the referee know the rules behind guest playing in a certain age group and then hoping that when the results are sent, that whether a player actually played or not would be lost in the details.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Starburst and referees

Totally a lighter side post here, but I just cracked open a Starburst candy and decided that as a referee, the below was just perfect.


Of course, you have to eat the yellow first.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Emergency Rations and nutrition

One side of refereeing that I don't think I have covered well up to now is what to eat while at the games. When you have a 4 game set or something like that, you are bound to get hungry. While I try my best to arrange to have a cooler with a sandwich and such, many times I have come to a field and don't have enough to eat so I had been racking my brain to figure out something that can stay in the trunk of my car for a long time in case I need something to eat and drink and don't have enough with me. Kind of like an emergency stash of some sorts.

The other requirement is that it has to be able to withstand cold and heat. Originally I had energy bars. And they worked fine if it was 70 degrees and cloudy, but would become rock solid if it was 40 degrees out and would melt if it was 90 degrees out.

So this is what I have come up with as emergency rations to have in the trunk of a car for those days when you just need something in your tummy:

-Bottled water (duh!) - Even though experts do not recommend plastic bottles that have been heated up by the sun too much because of the toxins that can seep from plastic to water, it still makes the most sense to have a case of water.

- Canned nuts - They don't seem to be affected too much from cold or heat and provide some nutrition like the energy bars but without the melting factor. I found cans of peanuts at Walmart for $1 each. They are perfect because they fill you up with just a couple.

- Saltines - For when you need something else other than peanuts. They shouldn't go bad too easily, or stale that quickly if they are in the stay-fresh packs.

As a side benefit, both salted peanuts and saltines have some sodium that you are losing via sweat, so it compliments water quite well. This mini list works well for me in this region of the country, where there is cold and heat to deal with. Those in Florida or Barrow, AK might have other recommendations.

What do you have as emergency rations should you be called at the last minute to a field?

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Whose game is it anyway?

This March soccer tournament season has generated a lot of material for me to write about. I had forgotten to mention previously something that happened during a small tournament I worked a couple of weeks ago.

I had reached out, last minute, to an assignor to see if he needed help and told him where my daughter was going to be playing, in case he needed help at those fields around the time I would be there anyway with my child. Sure enough, he sends me a "standby" assignment later that day. It is basically an assignment that requires you be at a site and see if anyone else doesn't show or gets hurt. Then you step in.

The week before this tournament, I was working another tournament and while en route to that tournament, there was a huge traffic accident. I called the assignor as well as the other two people I was working with to let them know that with the accident, I would probably not make it for kick off. Indeed, I arrived about 5 minutes after kick off. They had a standby referee and he took my spot for that game. These things happen and I was fine with it as I was not there at kick off. What was interesting there is that the center for that match told me that the spare stated that if he took the spot, it would be his for that game, that if I arrived, he would not "switch out" or be replaced. Again it makes sense to me, since he was there and I was not.

So fast forward to the weekend where I was the standby again, and 8am rolls around and there are 2 referees for one crew and the third is nowhere to be found, so I am asked to step in. 5 minutes before half time, the 3rd referee shows up. He walks over to me and askes me to swap right then and there, while ball is in play. I said not to worry, that we can talk at halftime. He takes a couple of steps back and just stands there for the remainder of the half.

At halftime, he insists that it is his game and that I need to go back to being a standby. I frankly did not care as this was not a high level assignment so I hand him my flag. Then I notice his badge. It did not say "Referee", it said "National Emeritus Referee". So at some moment, this guy was high level. I would have thought that he would have had more idea of what to do and what not to do with regards to missing an appointment. My feeling is that he should have backed off just like I had the week before, but I was not going to cause a stink like the guy who replaced me apparently did.

I don't know, whose game is it? The one who was originally assigned, regardless if they arrive late or the guy who is stepping into their shoes because the original person was not there at the start of the game? Let me know in your comments.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Brain Farts Part 2

I thought I would not have time, but I guess I am inspired. The second brain fart scenario was during the cold, windy and miserably wet game that was played this weekend where I was the center and should have suspended it due to the deplorable weather conditions.

During the game, a sub for the red team was waiting at midfield. The ball is rolling down the line near him and is clearly going to go out of bounds shortly. The kid, I guess, decided that he could save some time by not letting the ball roll down the hill behind him but he did not wait until the ball left the field of play. He basically stopped it while the ball was still "in". My AR who was right there, waggles his flag and I blow the whistle.

The kid realizes his mistake and since it was right there by both coaches, I try to find an amicable solution since this was just a young kid and a true brain fart. There was no intention to delay, to cheat, to do anything other than not let the ball roll down the hill. It would have been red's throw in but I suggested to both coaches if we had an uncontested drop ball for white since red touched the ball. The red coach said no, he did not think that was fair.

Since I had had just about enough from that coach by that time, I said "Fine". I called the kid over, issued a yellow card and said we were going to restart with an indirect free kick for white. Coach realized he probably should have accepted my initial offer. I did not feel like I had to explain to him that his not accepting my first offer was going to generate harsher consequences. He thought I should just give his team the throw in. Oh well. Hopefully the next referee that deals with him will have an easier time with him since he didn't get what he wanted just by protesting.

One of my pet peeves in soccer is when a coach demands that I do something that I would do anyway. Most commonly it is that a player has committed 3-4 fouls and they want a yellow card. Well, if they yell and scream to give the person a yellow, I have a hard time with that because of the fact that it "looks" like I am taking orders or just going along with what the coach says and that is rarely good for business. In this case, it was the coach not wanting to go along with an uncommon situation and forcing my hand to actually apply the rules even though I think no one thought the punishment fit the crime.

Brain Farts

Wild weather weekend this one. It was supposed to be around 45 and rainy for Saturday and Sunday this past weekend, but it was more like 20 and with freezing rain or tidbits of hail.

This post's title is because in the only game I did this weekend, I had a mental lapse that I realized after the fact and so did one of the kids in the game. First my shortcoming.

It was cold, it was miserable. I have my Under Armor compression shirt, my black, blue and yellow long sleeve ref shirts and a USSF Track jacket to ref the game and I was still cold. I had my long pants and two pairs of socks, and I was still cold. And when it started to rain, I thought it could not get worse, then it started to cool some more and the rain turned to frozen daggers. It stung when it hit my face and yet at no moment did my brain think the following statement, "I am the center referee for this match, I can suspend the game since it is so darn cold and the kids are complaining that it hurts and it could hit someone in the eyes."

It was silly of me, my ARs didn't say anything. I did not think about it and I should have. It was just too darn miserable and while some kids didn't seem to mind, most were just ready to leave and go to their cars. I should have suspended the match after talking to my ARs and to the coaches. It made no sense to put everyone through that. I guess you live and you learn, but even though we could play, we probably should not have played in those conditions.

The next game is where it got interesting as my son was playing in that. The weather got worse still (harder sleet/freezing rain and more wind) and the AR on the parent's side went to the center and said that he should suspend the match because he (the AR) could not see well because his glasses were covered in sleet and they were fogging up.

Sure enough, the center played the game and in the last minute the AR who could not see well was called upon to make an offside/no offside call that was a instrumental in the result of the match. Poor AR did not get it right and it was due to him not being able to see the field due to the conditions. I felt bad for the AR since he got put in a situation where he couldn't make the call because of the conditions they were playing in. It happens, but as a center referee, it is our call to make sure the kids are safe and the ARs can make game critical calls.

This went a little too long, so I will leave Brain Farts part 2 for next time. Till then.