Managing an AR who undermines you

Had a feisty game a few weeks back where I had one NAR (which keeps happening) because the other NAR pulled out last minute.

One team was giving constant chat in my ear and eventually had a couple of sin bins.

Their benches and fans were no better.

So I wasn't massively impressed to see my NAR laughing and chatting with one of the worst offenders for dissent whilst the game was on going, including the player covering his mouth PL style to say something.

It went on so long I was minded to dismiss them and have two CARs but wasn't really sure what my authority was in this situation.

Did you feel the NAR building a good rapport with that player undermined you or helped distract the player? I get how in a pressured situation, it can be easy to assume the worst, but for me, it sounds like your NAR was keeping that player happy when the alternative is the player being in the middle of the pitch and moaning at you - I'd be thrilled if I saw a troublesome player miles away from me, interacting positively with my NAR and calming down as a result!

In terms of your authority, I'm fairly sure you can dismiss them, but for an NAR that would be an extreme overreaction for anything short of what you would red card for if it were a player. Particularly where you have a borderline sin bin player talking to them, it's easy to jog over at the next nearby stoppage and "confirm" that nothing they said needed you to take action, and perhaps also remind them to keep an eye out for that player and keep chat professional.

To be honest, even suggesting that much feels a little over-officious, but in a tough game I get the desire to try and do something. But remember a common part of pre-match briefings for the bench-side AR is "Don't defend the indefensible" - not saying you made any indefensible calls, but the NAR also isn't obliged to pretend they think everything you've done is 100% spot-on. Even if you're correct and the assistant is disagreeing with your calls, a bit of the NAR reminding the player you're human isn't automatically a bad approach IMO.

It would need to be something really bad to remove an NAR from his duties. You would have to either report what you did to the appointing authority (if for incompetence) or his CFA (if for misconduct), and they aren't going to be best impressed if you removed him for laughing and chatting with a player, even if it was one that was giving you problems.

And, as @GraemeS said, it could be that he was trying to take the heat off of you. I've certainly tried to intervene with a troublesome player when I've been on the line to a young and / or inexperienced referee who is finding it tough. I've had occasions where the player has come over to me and said things like "can't you take over", "is he always this bad", etc. I'm not going to ignore him and will say something back like "we all have to start somewhere" or "you should have seen me when I first started, I was a hundred times worse", and sometimes that does calm them down and probably almost looks like I am having a laugh with them. It's the same as an observer, players and managers will often come to me to complain about the referee, I try not to just ignore them as that doesn't help anyone, and rather I'll try to placate them without actually commenting on the referee's performance.

I'm actually really interested to know how you deal with one NAR? Do you have the other clubs take one half each with CAR or not? Sorry that this is totally irrelevant, but it's looking like I will end up with the same situation at a game next weekend.

I was 4th recently. A middle blew for a penalty, assistant flagged. They had a quiet chat with each other and penalty stood.

A bit later before half-time NAR was stood waiting for the ball to be kicked in front of the penalised bench and the coach asked what happened.

To my horror I heard him say: 'I thought it wasn't a penalty and quickly explain to the bench why he disagreed with the middle'

He was new to being an AR and working in neutral teams.

At half-time I just explained to him that the penalised team will try and split us up as a team because of his comments and just try and stick to being one cohesive group.

Then the penalised team knocked on to discuss the penalty...

Gabriel said:

I'm actually really interested to know how you deal with one NAR? Do you have the other clubs take one half each with CAR or not? Sorry that this is totally irrelevant, but it's looking like I will end up with the same situation at a game next weekend.

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Yeah one team did each half. Honestly it’s a nightmare and I’d rather have no NAR than just one

OldNavyRef said:

I was 4th recently. A middle blew for a penalty, assistant flagged. They had a quiet chat with each other and penalty stood.

A bit later before half-time NAR was stood waiting for the ball to be kicked in front of the penalised bench and the coach asked what happened.

To my horror I heard him say: 'I thought it wasn't a penalty and quickly explain to the bench why he disagreed with the middle'

He was new to being an AR and working in neutral teams.

At half-time I just explained to him that the penalised team will try and split us up as a team because of his comments and just try and stick to being one cohesive group.

Then the penalised team knocked on to discuss the penalty...

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This was my concern, the impression I got from the players she interacted with was that she was basically saying I was having a mare/out of my depth. She’s senior to me (level 4) but it’s a Sunday league game so I really don’t get why.

Sorry to sort of highjack this but it seems sort of relevant to some of the points raised. Any tips on how to deal with this situation?

I was 4th recently for a cup semi final which went to penalties. The referee, who had a cracking game overall, was allowing the goalkeeper from one side to go and get the ball and pass it to the opposition penalty takers, holding it out and making them walk to take it off him and put them off etc.
I clocked it straight away and was thinking 'get that ball of the keeper'. The dugout then clocked it too and were going ballistic about it. Obviously if we had comms its and easy one to say to the ref discreetly, but with the lack of those, the dugout are pressuring me to tell the referee to stop them but I'm 50 metres away.

How I did deal with it, was to tell them 'unfortunately, if I had comms I could get a message to him, but it's gonna look extremely unprofessional if I run over there or shout to him from here, you've 2 options, you can either scream it to him yourself and I'll tell you to calm down a bit afterwards (said with a hint of jest) or you tell your keeper to make sure he gets the ball himself'

Just wondered if anyone has any better ideas.

RefereeX said:

How I did deal with it, was to tell them 'unfortunately, if I had comms I could get a message to him, but it's gonna look extremely unprofessional if I run over there or shout to him from here, you've 2 options, you can either scream it to him yourself and I'll tell you to calm down a bit afterwards (said with a hint of jest) or you tell your keeper to make sure he gets the ball himself'

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I quite like this to be honest. Not massively undermining but allows the issue to be resolved. Could be worth trying to flag down one of the ARs? Assuming one is at half way line so within reach?

You're there to assist the referee, especially on matters of law, so maybe going via the "Assistant" referees works well?

Hopefully, a wild @JamesL will appear to tell us protocol actually requires you sling the board onto the pitch or something

OnlyUseMeWhistle said:

I quite like this to be honest. Not massively undermining but allows the issue to be resolved. Could be worth trying to flag down one of the ARs? Assuming one is at half way line so within reach?

You're there to assist the referee, especially on matters of law, so maybe going via the "Assistant" referees works well?

Hopefully, a wild @JamesL will appear to tell us protocol actually requires you sling the board onto the pitch or something

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I did consider if I could use the ARs but one is in the middle of the centre circle and still obviously half the pitch away from the referee and the other is on the opposite side of the field down by the penalty area acting as goal line / keeper movement judge, so no easier for me to get a message to them than the referee anyway.

Not really a great deal to add. I think @RefereeX has had a good chop at it.

One suggestion could be to get the referee over under the guise of giving the manager a stage 1 warning. Tell him what's going wrong, tell him to B*lock the manager and then get back to the KFTPM and manage the pks better

You can only really get involved with TA behaviour or where something procedural is wrong and you as a team are at risk of not sufficiently applying law. Anything above that is overly officious and risks undermining the team, or as @santa sangria says breaking the team.

As an example, I was 4th man on our senior cup final last year, and a penalty taker had removed his shin pads. By luck we'd discussed this on here a couple of weeks before. I had to run down the FOP and alert the ref before the kick was taken. Would have been easier if buzzers were in use but @Ross the boss had mine and returned them midway through the 2nd half .

OnlyUseMeWhistle said:

This was my concern, the impression I got from the players she interacted with was that she was basically saying I was having a mare/out of my depth. She’s senior to me (level 4) but it’s a Sunday league game so I really don’t get why.

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I mean - these are players who have been dissenting and undermining you at every step. I wouldn't trust them if they told me the sky was blue, let alone their reports on what your AR is saying!

JamesL said:

As an example, I was 4th man on our senior cup final last year, and a penalty taker had removed his shin pads. By luck we'd discussed this on here a couple of weeks before. I had to run down the FOP and alert the ref before the kick was taken. Would have been easier if buzzers were in use but @Ross the boss had mine and returned them midway through the 2nd half .

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In my defence, your 3rd flag wasn’t connected at the time anyway, wasn’t until after the game you sorted it
I’ve got my own now anyway

Ross said:

In my defence, your 3rd flag wasn’t connected at the time anyway, wasn’t until after the game you sorted it
I’ve got my own now anyway

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Ahh yes. That is very true. So it would have been normal service then!!

JamesL said:

Ahh yes. That is very true. So it would have been normal service then!!

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Exactly! You should have heard some of the comments made by the experts when you made him put his pads on

RefereeX said:

Sorry to sort of highjack this but it seems sort of relevant to some of the points raised. Any tips on how to deal with this situation?

I was 4th recently for a cup semi final which went to penalties. The referee, who had a cracking game overall, was allowing the goalkeeper from one side to go and get the ball and pass it to the opposition penalty takers, holding it out and making them walk to take it off him and put them off etc.
I clocked it straight away and was thinking 'get that ball of the keeper'. The dugout then clocked it too and were going ballistic about it. Obviously if we had comms its and easy one to say to the ref discreetly, but with the lack of those, the dugout are pressuring me to tell the referee to stop them but I'm 50 metres away.

How I did deal with it, was to tell them 'unfortunately, if I had comms I could get a message to him, but it's gonna look extremely unprofessional if I run over there or shout to him from here, you've 2 options, you can either scream it to him yourself and I'll tell you to calm down a bit afterwards (said with a hint of jest) or you tell your keeper to make sure he gets the ball himself'

Just wondered if anyone has any better ideas.

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Not really a lot you can do about that. As you said, with comms you could alert him to it, but without them I can't really see anything you could do.