I spent last weekend assessing two promotion candidates for the County FA who were both aspiring to Level 4.
Saturday's game went reasonably well but Sunday's was abandoned after 61 minutes when the away team had their 5th player sent off. Not something I've seen before, which was the theme of my last post on this blog and hopefully I'll not see again!
Today's two games (both U15) threw up a few situations which made me take a breath before deciding what to do. The first was a goal kick that the home team goalkeeper decided to take across the face of his goal towards his left back. The ball wasn't rolling well so the full back and an attacker both ran inside the penalty area. They challenged for the ball and the left back trips the attacker before playing the ball. This all happened in a split second. Now normally, the alarm bells ring and its time to point at the mark but this time a little voice said to me, "Not this time". The ball hadn't left the penalty area, so it wasn't in play, so it was blast on whistle, tell the players what was happening and point back at the goal area. Imagine what would have happened if I'd pointed before telling the players ...
This incident came just after there had been a shot on goal parried by the goalkeeper and into the path of a player who had been in an offside position at the time of the shot. Offside by gaining an advantage? I think I've only had one of these before!
The third incident happened in my second game of the day which was played on a field with a surface that resembled a sponge cake, particularly in the upper left quadrant ... where a lot of the action took place, leaving me dragging my already tired feet out of the gloopy surface. The home team were pressing forward in search of a winning goal and the ball was played from right midfield towards the centre forward (standing in an offside position) but it missed him and ran towards the goal line between the edge of the goal area and the penalty area. The goalkeeper ran around behind the ball and was standing there doing nothing, before stepping up to kick it up the field, when the attacker moved towards him. Now he had taken more than 10 seconds to take this action and if I hadn't been concentrating I might have left it slip, but it was a quick peep and ball down for the indirect free kick restart.
So it's two weeks without a whistle now as I have a Supply assessment on Tuesday then two more promotion assessments to do next weekend. Here's some graphs to prove I am still working hard in my games ... look at the peak in the 2nd half of the 2nd game ... 101% of max!
Continue reading...
Saturday's game went reasonably well but Sunday's was abandoned after 61 minutes when the away team had their 5th player sent off. Not something I've seen before, which was the theme of my last post on this blog and hopefully I'll not see again!
Today's two games (both U15) threw up a few situations which made me take a breath before deciding what to do. The first was a goal kick that the home team goalkeeper decided to take across the face of his goal towards his left back. The ball wasn't rolling well so the full back and an attacker both ran inside the penalty area. They challenged for the ball and the left back trips the attacker before playing the ball. This all happened in a split second. Now normally, the alarm bells ring and its time to point at the mark but this time a little voice said to me, "Not this time". The ball hadn't left the penalty area, so it wasn't in play, so it was blast on whistle, tell the players what was happening and point back at the goal area. Imagine what would have happened if I'd pointed before telling the players ...
This incident came just after there had been a shot on goal parried by the goalkeeper and into the path of a player who had been in an offside position at the time of the shot. Offside by gaining an advantage? I think I've only had one of these before!
The third incident happened in my second game of the day which was played on a field with a surface that resembled a sponge cake, particularly in the upper left quadrant ... where a lot of the action took place, leaving me dragging my already tired feet out of the gloopy surface. The home team were pressing forward in search of a winning goal and the ball was played from right midfield towards the centre forward (standing in an offside position) but it missed him and ran towards the goal line between the edge of the goal area and the penalty area. The goalkeeper ran around behind the ball and was standing there doing nothing, before stepping up to kick it up the field, when the attacker moved towards him. Now he had taken more than 10 seconds to take this action and if I hadn't been concentrating I might have left it slip, but it was a quick peep and ball down for the indirect free kick restart.
So it's two weeks without a whistle now as I have a Supply assessment on Tuesday then two more promotion assessments to do next weekend. Here's some graphs to prove I am still working hard in my games ... look at the peak in the 2nd half of the 2nd game ... 101% of max!
Continue reading...
