A match this weekend left me with a couple of questions around how to go about managing players and benches without actually being the one with the cards and whistles. While the referee did a very good job with a difficult away team, I noticed a couple "minor" fouls that he seemed to deliberately let go - and I understand it's part of my job to adjust to that, even if I would have been stricter in the middle.
Where I struggled was he also seemed to give more leeway on dissent that I would. So around 75 minutes when a player turned round to argue a decision with me, and the referee was distracted by an incident on the benches, I didn't really know how to take control of that situation - where if I was in the middle, I'm fairly sure my whistle would have helped and I would certainly have considered/threatened a card. But knowing the ref wouldn't want to card for what he was saying (which he confirmed in the dressing room after), I felt like I was stuck repeating a reason for my decision and hoping the player would go away. And I knew that waving the ref over and insisting on a card would have been totally out of tone with how he'd managed the match so far, so I felt a bit stuck.
The other issue I had is down to the fact that I'm working at a level where I'm often asked to act as the senior AR the majority of the time. I was getting on fairly well with the home bench I was in front of, the one problem I had was they were getting a bit would up by the other bench. But due to the fact I had to spend a large amount of time running away up the line, the only thing I could really pick up from the away bench was some slightly over-enthusiastic appealing - and even if I did want to have a word and could find an appropriate time to do it, I didn't feel like I could risk taking my eye off the game and getting caught out by a quick break.
In the dissent incident I described above, the referee was distracted by talking to the away bench and threatening to send a manager away. He said after the match that he would have felt his decision to come over and talk to them would have had more credibility if I'd flagged him over rather than him having to react directly to something they said, but for the reason I talked about before, I didn't really hear anything that could possibly have justified calling him over - despite the fact that both him and the home bench obviously weren't happy with what the away bench were up to.
So any tips for keeping aware of what benches are up to behind you - and what kind of thing I should be looking out for to consider unacceptable? Compared to how in-control I now tend to feel in the middle, running a line feels so much down to the luck of the combination of players and ref, and you haven't really got much input into how the match goes - is that fair, or should I be asserting myself more somehow?
Where I struggled was he also seemed to give more leeway on dissent that I would. So around 75 minutes when a player turned round to argue a decision with me, and the referee was distracted by an incident on the benches, I didn't really know how to take control of that situation - where if I was in the middle, I'm fairly sure my whistle would have helped and I would certainly have considered/threatened a card. But knowing the ref wouldn't want to card for what he was saying (which he confirmed in the dressing room after), I felt like I was stuck repeating a reason for my decision and hoping the player would go away. And I knew that waving the ref over and insisting on a card would have been totally out of tone with how he'd managed the match so far, so I felt a bit stuck.
The other issue I had is down to the fact that I'm working at a level where I'm often asked to act as the senior AR the majority of the time. I was getting on fairly well with the home bench I was in front of, the one problem I had was they were getting a bit would up by the other bench. But due to the fact I had to spend a large amount of time running away up the line, the only thing I could really pick up from the away bench was some slightly over-enthusiastic appealing - and even if I did want to have a word and could find an appropriate time to do it, I didn't feel like I could risk taking my eye off the game and getting caught out by a quick break.
In the dissent incident I described above, the referee was distracted by talking to the away bench and threatening to send a manager away. He said after the match that he would have felt his decision to come over and talk to them would have had more credibility if I'd flagged him over rather than him having to react directly to something they said, but for the reason I talked about before, I didn't really hear anything that could possibly have justified calling him over - despite the fact that both him and the home bench obviously weren't happy with what the away bench were up to.
So any tips for keeping aware of what benches are up to behind you - and what kind of thing I should be looking out for to consider unacceptable? Compared to how in-control I now tend to feel in the middle, running a line feels so much down to the luck of the combination of players and ref, and you haven't really got much input into how the match goes - is that fair, or should I be asserting myself more somehow?
