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Extraordinary situation in the Premier League match between Norwich City and Cardiff City. A few minutes in extra time of the second half, Ricky van Wolfswinkel throws in for Norwich after the ball was kicked out for an injury. Leroy … Continue reading → The post Common sense from referee Jones or error appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

Angry bird attacks assistant referee Maycon Vieira during a match in the Brazilian league. He ran the line at the match between Navegantes and Inter de Lages in a Santa Catarina State Championship game. Metro described in beautifully: “But things … Continue reading → The post Angry bird attacks assistant referee appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

The anticipation is building among referees about who will go to the World Cup, says Massimo Busacca, Fifa’s Head of Refereeing in the new magazine Fifa Weekly. Fifa confirmed to Arbitro Internacional that the referee committee will have a meeting … Continue reading → The post 5 qualities World Cup referees should have appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

Alex Ferguson biography released and the former Manchester United coach is not positive about referees – as could be expected. Below some quotes from him during the presentation of the book. Guardian journalists were at the press conference where Alex … Continue reading → The post Alex Ferguson biography on referees appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

A lot of what happens on a field during a game falls under the heading of player management. It might be the communication of why you've given a particular decision or it might be the conversation you have with a player and his captain at the obvious rebuke stage of the stepped approach or it might be as simple as the checking off of a substitutes name as he joins the game. Player management is no excuse for shirking your responsibility to apply law, especially for mandatory offences like failing to respect the required distance but it is your key to earning higher club marks. This means that if the assessors are picking up on things that don't seem to be completely correct in your games, then the love from clubs might save your season...

Stefan Kiessling from Bayer Leverkusen has scored a ghost goal. His header went wide, but touched the net of the goal. Due to a hole in the net, the ball went into the goal from the side and not between … Continue reading → The post Ghost goal allowed by referee in German Bundesliga appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

They say it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks but I have to disagree as this old dog tried a new trick this weekend and it worked a treat. I confess that I am a thief, a magpie if you like, of other people's valuable ideas and after considering them, I often drag them into my professional and refereeing life, getting good use out of them. I do not take credit for the advice of others who have taken the time to pass their advice to me and always acknowledge the source. Most of the time, I'm so busy storing up these other ideas that I forget who mentioned it originally, but I always mention it came to me from "a friend". On Saturday I assessed a referee and one of the things I noticed was when he had a free kick outside the penalty...

The first weekend in the months of October to March in my part of the world see County competitions taking place across the full age range. Last season I received the honour of a semi-final appointment for the Junior Shield which involved two 11 a side teams playing on a full sized field. Roll on the advance of the Youth Review and the County FA have adopted the 9v9 (with offside) format for this year's competition. Having already put in a couple of two game Sundays, I was virtually obliged to accept the appointment to a First Round game in a neighbouring town to accompany my open age Sunday Trophy game in the same town. The first match of the day was very competitive for around 60 minutes as the two teams battled against the long...

The hawk-eye system worked a bit too well in Dutch Eredivisie. Referee Danny Makkelie went crazy because of this new technology, which was used for the first time during a match in Dutch top league last weekend. The reason: nobody … Continue reading → The post Hawk-eye system makes referee crazy appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

10 weeks of my summer were spent running up hill and down dale in an effort to get ready for today's kick-off only for my best laid plans to go awry in the last 3 weeks as I picked up a calf strain. I kept losing weight because of my change in diet and starting a new job but my training was on hold. I've managed to lose 26lbs (11.8kg) since the beginning of June. So it was with some trepidation that I stepped out on my opening 11 a side game of the season. I had some nagging doubts as I felt a bit of tiredness in it yesterday when I was working with a group of new referees on their Basic Course. As things turned out I had good reason to be wary as I managed to tweak the calf again in the warm-up and walked for most of the first half...

A referee of a Dutch ladies match abandoned a match due to streaking students. The referee had to stop the match Knickerbockers 2 – Oranje Nassau 2 three times because naked students walked on the pitch. He also had to … Continue reading → The post Match abandoned due to streaking students appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

Having eased myself through last week's emergency outing in a Sunday League game and a planned junior game in the afternoon, I stepped out this morning with a little more confidence about my return to match fitness. The unexpected calf injury 6 weeks ago spoilt my early season run outs but today I felt stronger and as a result put in two decent performances. The first was a bottom division Sunday League game between two teams new to the league. The home team's Secretary used to regularly feature in the County FA's disciplinary list and the away team started their season with having two players sent off in the first round of games of the new season. Despite the warm weather, tempers did not become frayed, players competed fairly and I...

Flicking through the articles on a news website I found one that claimed in today's world we actually prefer people lying to us rather than tell the truth. It made me think about something that had been said to me on a few occasions over the last 3 weeks or so. It was "Thanks for being honest". A simple statement but the manner in which it was said spoke volumes about the hidden message behind the words. Speaking of honesty, it was interesting to see that a high profile player in the English Premier League was cautioned yesterday for obvious simulation. To compound matters he was berated by his manager (at least publicly) after the game. Back to my three scenarios ... The first came after a de-brief during which I had to deliver a...

At the weekend I read about a local council who had not prepared all of the fields due to be used by local Sunday Leagues for the opening games of their season. Looking back one year my local Sunday League was in the same position. That was nothing to do with the annual switch from cricket to football seen on many council owned fields which is the bane of their lives for many fixture secretaries. For all of the political rhetoric about the creation of a sporting legacy in the wake of the London Olympics, local councils in many areas do not appear to have the necessary funding to organise themselves for the start of the football season. It's not as if the date varies that much from year to year. Many Sunday Leagues kick off in the last...

Gibraltar is now a Uefa member. But how does this affect Gibraltar referees? Adrian Bacarisa, the Head of Refereeing in the country, hopes that match officials from Gibraltar will become international refs in 2016. Read the interview with him from … Continue reading → The post “Gibraltar referees will hopefully go international in 2016″ appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

An Italian referee movie about a corrupt referee has been released during the Venice Film Festival this week. The story tells the story of the rise and fall of corrupt referee Cruciani. The screenplay of Paolo Zucca and Barbara Alberti … Continue reading → The post Italian referee movie about currupt “arbitro” appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. Continue reading...

Craig Bellamy jokingling pours water over referee Lee Probert during the match between Cardiff and Manchester City. The referee was on the sideline talking with the coaches and Bellamy thought it would be funny to empty the water bottle above … Continue reading → The post Bellamy jokingly pours water over referee appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

A suprising thing this weekend while checking the scores of international competitions via a mobile phone. The football app says: Sejad Salihović scores and gets red card – both in the same minute. Later that night I watched the highlights … Continue reading → The post Sejad Salihović scores and gets red card appeared first on Football: Dutch Referee Blog for match officials. Continue reading...

I didn't bother too much with pre-season training last year and across the course of the season my weight shot up. Combined with the inactivity brought on by a period out of work, I touched just over 18St (115kg). I decided to start training on June 3 and while I found it tough, I persevered ... until August 12 that is ... just 3 days before my 50th birthday when I picked up a calf injury. It's responding well to rest and I managed a few minutes jogging on Friday without too much of a reaction. I used to spend time publishing the records of my training from screen prints of my heart rate monitor records. I can now link straight to them and this was one of my more recent sessions. My weight is down now and yesterday I tipped the...