Monday, November 24, 2014

Recert time

This is the first time that all 3 of us referees in the family have to recert. My kids are doing it at the end of this month and I will be doing it in December. The classes are sometimes hard to come by because of the fact that the weekends that you can take the class are also the weekends when one or two of the kids are playing in a tournament. Most recently, they have been out of town to boot.

So it comes as a surprise that I am having a hard time finding the 2014/2015 Laws of the Game USSF style. I must be looking in the wrong place as I have the 2013/2014 one in PDF but cannot locate the newest version. I found the FIFA version in no time flat, but the more local version has just been hard to find. The main USSF site still has the 2013/2014 rules, which I think will be good enough to have while taking the exam.

The one thing that makes me question our process is that now we test prior to taking the class, so it assumes that there are no questions or other situation that the referee wants to cover before taking the exam. Or perhaps it just makes things easier, at least for us in the Northern VA area. I wonder how things are handled elsewhere.

Just in case you are wondering, the link to all the documentation that USSF has is here:

https://ussoccer.app.box.com/s/ruqcsf0671k1bcf6dzwf


Monday, November 10, 2014

My way or the highway

This past weekend, my son and I worked a couple of higher level games at the U17 and U18 level. My son did not disappoint but he did say that this is the level of soccer he likes to work on, so I might have spoiled him in terms of working U8 or U10 rec games from here on out. In the first game, where I was center, it was a decent game but with one team really pushing to get the goal while the other played counter (and not very effectively).

White was the more aggressive team and should have put away their chances in the first half but the post said no 4 times in that half. On the other side, black had one play where there was a shot and the keeper bobbled it and then lost control, it was falling to the attacker and then the keeper sort of fell on her. I immediately said "no foul" and no one protested but at halftime, we discussed it and I had the nagging feeling that it should have been a PK. The lead AR, a grade 6 said that absolutely it should have been a PK because she misplayed the ball and the chances of the attacker scoring from that distance had she not had the keeper fall on her would have been close to 100% since it was at around the 6 where the collision happened.

In the second game, the State referee took charge and immediately you saw a difference in the two styles of refereeing. I think that if you were to compare my style with that of this grade 6 would be in the levels of accommodations. I think I was more accommodating to the style the girls wanted to play and what the coaches and players were expecting to have called.

In his game we had a lot of "what was that call all about?" moments in the game. Not that he called a bad game, but coaches, players and my guess is parents as well all had to think about what some of the calls were. Not that I think they were wrong per se, but he did call things "his way". In the first 10 minutes one coach yelled out his displeasure over a non call (that was called, just waiting for advantage to dissipate) and the center looked over and said "enough" very clearly. While the coach chipped away some more in terms of comments later in the half, he did not make them public enough for the center to hear, so he got away with them. I did mention to the center that he was making those comments but part of me thought that the coach was right, since I couldn't make out some of the calls or the logic myself. Since he didn't hear them, he was ok with them if I was ok with them is how we decided to measure the level of dissent.

In the second half, the other team's coach wanted to have a conversation about a perceived foul on one of his players. The center comes over and immediately states that he is not going to have a conversation. "No more", "enough" and such were stated by the center making it clear that he did not want to hear about the alleged knee in the back that the coach wanted some commentary on. After the 4th time (in a span of 30 seconds) we went from ask, tell, dismiss to almost abandoning the game. The coach could not believe that the referee did not want to hear his side of the story and kept saying "but she got kneed in the back", "you have to protect the players" and "the other coach has been talking all game". To answer to the coach (again, I can see some of his side because to call the level of refereeing erratic would have been an understatement), however, the kneeing was called with an advantage call and I think the center was going to admonish the person who committed it had the coach not asked for more attention and the protection of players was never a problem with this center and the other coach said everything he said after the first public comment loud enough for the benches to hear but not the center.

He sent him packing but then after the game, the coach came back. Big mistake. That one game suspension probably doubled or tripled when he tried to have another conversation with the referee. But it does mean more paperwork for everyone involved. Good to see my son got exposed to that without being the brunt of the problem. More to come on the fallout as I have it.