After more than 12 years involvement in a refereeing, it's rare that something happens which makes me go hmmmm.
This morning I had a Cup game to referee between two open age teams who have "interesting" disciplinary records this season. Although I never try to pre-judge players or teams, I do have a strategy to deal with certain situations. This morning's strategy was to strangle the game in the first 10 minutes, then ease off if things quietened down.
Things almost went to plan but a 3 cautions and a penalty in the first half hour meant it would take something unusual to bring this one completely under control. And that's when it fell into my lap and had players questioning my action but in a good way. It was a simple course of events with a charge in the penalty area seeing the award of another penalty. It would, if scored, tie the scores as we headed into the last 5 minutes of the half.
I went through the procedure of letting the player set the ball - a little to the side of the centre of the mark as the centre was a few millimetres short of being a crater (just as we had for the earlier penalty at the other end of the field) - sweeping the edge of the penalty (and getting the usual grumbles) - talking to the goalkeeper about staying on his goal line until the ball was played and then signalling the restart.
The player ran up and hit the ball, it looked a good kick but hit the inside of the goal post and bounced out. I'm sure I heard a team mate shout that he couldn't play it again but that's exactly what he did. My brain went through a series of thoughts such as "Did he really do that?", "If he did, what am I supposed to do?" and finally, "I'm going to get grief here".
I blew the whistle and because I displayed the indirect free kick signal a number of players said, "Oh yeah, offside" and wandered back towards their own goal to defend. A couple asked me why I hadn't let his follow up shot, which went into the goal, stand. I explained quickly that you can't play the ball to yourself at any restart and eventually the message filtered through to those near me.
Before the half was finished I had to dismiss one of the players cautioned earlier. I left his team alone to re-organise at half time but when the game was over I was happy to explain the reason for my actions and for once, the players appeared to appreciate the finer points of the law. So maybe I had two unusual things happen today?
Continue reading...
This morning I had a Cup game to referee between two open age teams who have "interesting" disciplinary records this season. Although I never try to pre-judge players or teams, I do have a strategy to deal with certain situations. This morning's strategy was to strangle the game in the first 10 minutes, then ease off if things quietened down.
Things almost went to plan but a 3 cautions and a penalty in the first half hour meant it would take something unusual to bring this one completely under control. And that's when it fell into my lap and had players questioning my action but in a good way. It was a simple course of events with a charge in the penalty area seeing the award of another penalty. It would, if scored, tie the scores as we headed into the last 5 minutes of the half.
I went through the procedure of letting the player set the ball - a little to the side of the centre of the mark as the centre was a few millimetres short of being a crater (just as we had for the earlier penalty at the other end of the field) - sweeping the edge of the penalty (and getting the usual grumbles) - talking to the goalkeeper about staying on his goal line until the ball was played and then signalling the restart.
The player ran up and hit the ball, it looked a good kick but hit the inside of the goal post and bounced out. I'm sure I heard a team mate shout that he couldn't play it again but that's exactly what he did. My brain went through a series of thoughts such as "Did he really do that?", "If he did, what am I supposed to do?" and finally, "I'm going to get grief here".
I blew the whistle and because I displayed the indirect free kick signal a number of players said, "Oh yeah, offside" and wandered back towards their own goal to defend. A couple asked me why I hadn't let his follow up shot, which went into the goal, stand. I explained quickly that you can't play the ball to yourself at any restart and eventually the message filtered through to those near me.
Before the half was finished I had to dismiss one of the players cautioned earlier. I left his team alone to re-organise at half time but when the game was over I was happy to explain the reason for my actions and for once, the players appeared to appreciate the finer points of the law. So maybe I had two unusual things happen today?
Continue reading...
