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All the finals I took part in over the years were without pay, expenses or food. I was obviously in the wrong counties!

Arguably ignoring a direct instruction is dissent. Personally I would stop the game until the instruction was complied with, if it came to it. Peer pressure will do the job!

My second one was from over 10 years ago too, and clearly still bothers me! Just goes to show how much these things actually do mean to us!

I think people easily get caught between the words 'obvious' and 'opportunity', when you have to consider both together.

Not a final but a semi final. I was AR, ball in the penalty area about 10 yards in front of me, two players jostling for it. I saw a hand come out and swat the ball away and was convinced it was the attacker, so signalled (big and proud!) a defensive FK. From the reaction of both players and...

I started refereeing in 1998....! I've had a couple of gaps, but always kept in touch with it. I still get anxious in the lead up to every game, and there are plenty of times I've wondered why I continue to do it. Now I mix lower league refereeing with a bit of AR work in the WNL and...

Good coaches tend to manage the parents too. Poor coaches encourage them to behave badly.

I completely agree (apart from the various spellings of 'truth' ;)). As always, there is probably more to this than meets the eye. I also dislike the 'referee has lost control' rather than the 'players have lost control'. At the very least it must be both!

I guess if intent doesn't come into the equation, then it doesn't matter whether he slipped or not if it was deemed excessive force?

This is really important as the ball is still in play at this point - so can't be stopped for a substitution, for example. (I did that in my very first game, to get treatment for an injury, then carried on to everyone's confusion 😒)

"disregard for safety of an opponent"? I'm sure nearly all of us work in places with very specific usage of terms that can be misinterpreted if you work in a different field. Ultimately like all terms the important thing is that the concept it aims at describing just needs to be understood...

Surely his coming back on was down to the manager!?

Completely agree with all of these. Personally I still struggle with 1), but I get away with more because I am better at doing 2) and 3).

If, in your opinion, it was a goal, then it was a goal. You may doubt yourself, and we all do sometimes, but I suspect the reason your confidence feels low is because you allowed the manager to dictate the decision. There will always be cases where the reaction of others makes you second...

I'm not an observer (though I do mentor) so can't really answer from that point of view. I would absolutely defend a caution here, he hasn't entered with the sole intent of confrontation, which is how I understand the law. However, he has then committed dissent, which is cautionable.

The problem with that is it leads to the ends justifying the means, which (IMO) is fine in this case, but sets a precedent nobody will normally want to see. The only justification for this would be judgement that this was a clear and obvious error and that is certainly not cut and dried!

Me too, but I would say to the offender that that was the only reason he wasn't getting cautioned.

I'm AR more often than I middle these days. My standard to add to your line is that '(s)he's got a different angle than us', particularly when I'm bench-side. It's neither positively affirming that you disagree with the referee or actively agreeing with them when that's not credible - just...

With all due respect, I suspect that's because it's very rarely the case that referees do get a decision objectively wrong and - where they do - the only important thing is why that has happened (and I don't mean corruption, incompetence, bias or any of the other insults bandied around...

And to add, the value of this forum is to assess and understand refereeing decisions from an objective point of view. Once this becomes skewed by bias, the conversation loses its value. I'm all for questioning and challenging decisions in order to understand, but not just for the purpose of...