A&H

Abandoned match today.....

IslandReferee

IslandReferee

Active Member
Aloha to all my fellow referees and happy new year. Its been a bit since I posted, but what a mess I had on my hands this evening.

Varsity boys match. I knew it was going to be a banger. As far as island soccer goes, it was Westside versus Eastside. Needless to say, it was going to be a fast and furious match. Blow the whistle to start. The game is of course very fast paced and very well played. Nothing serious going besides that, two fouls in the first 15 minutes. I know the aggressors in this match and also know the ones that play very fast and also know the players that are very nasty and disrespectful. 20th minute, there is a play in the box by a very quick forward, the defender is there and forces attacker towards the corner flag. I am working my way there since this was a long ball into the attacking third. The two players are going at it with the ball, nothing serious at this point but it has my attention. As I am drawing nearer and I am just about to blow my whistle for a foul going the other way, these two idiots decide to start boxing. I immediately quicken my pace and am there in a heartbeat trying to break this up and also trying to keep track of who is who and who did what. I break the on the field stuff up and then look towards my 4th official to only see a bench-clearing brawl on the sidelines between both teams. One parent actually decided to jump the wall and enter the field as well to just argue. At this point, I have completely lost track of all the red cards that were going to needed to be issues and obvioulsy a bench clearing brawl in a high school forced the match to be abandoned. It was crazy to say the least. I was the

I was the
 
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After we ended the match it took us a while to sort this, only issuing the two red cards to the first two instigators pending I am sure some sort of official inquiry and more red cards. What I am looking for here is how you, if you have ever encountered this before handled yourselves? I know that as of right now I am comfortable with the way the match went and the level of my management of the game. It is just one of those, what in the world were they thinking here.
 
From the way you've described it, it sounds as if the protagonists were all on "simmer" before the match even commenced so little or nothing you could have done would have made much difference.

The only thing I noted, was that you've said there were only two "fouls" in the first 15/20 minutes. For a match with added needle anyway, this is actually quite unusual. Is it possible that you were letting a lot of borderline careless challenges go unpunished in the interests of letting the game flow which in turn could have frustrated or "ignited" the players tempers? You mention a parent being involved but haven't stated what actual age group this was? :)
 
Happy new year to you too!

Honestly, from your description I don't think there's anything I could say you could have done better! You anticipated the match, sounds like you made sure to respond quickly to early fouls and to anything simmering. The fight came out of the blue, you got there quickly, benches started fighting, crowd got involved, abandonment was correct.

The only thing I can suggest - if you weren't doing this already - is to use your voice - "Nothing silly!" "Hands down!" that sort of thing. Reminds them you're watching. Maybe you were doing that.

Without being there, I wonder if you should have blown quicker in the corner - but maybe there was nothing.

@Kes has a good point about foul tolerance. Again, simply asking the question
Have you asked the 4th where the bench fight came from? I mean, surely there was an argument starting? Surely they didn't just ran at each other the moment the players did? Maybe that's exactly what happened.

You're not the first ref to have a match abandoned like this and you won't be the last!
 
And yes Bloodbeard I always am very vocal and offer warnings. What's ironic is we are similar here in Hawaii as in the UK for the amount of bullshit that we have to deal with!
 
I’ve not yet had a game which has boiled over the top to a mass brawl but does anybody have any tips on how to quickly take in what’s going on. My worry has always been one starting off and I begin to lose players who should be carded, missing someone out etc. Do you also submit a misconduct alongside the reds for a Mass confrontation as well?
 
That is what happened to us as a referee team. We were very experienced but at some point, we all lost track of who was doing what..
 
QuaverRef said:
I’ve not yet had a game which has boiled over the top to a mass brawl but does anybody have any tips on how to quickly take in what’s going on. My worry has always been one starting off and I begin to lose players who should be carded, missing someone out etc.
Click to expand...

Not much you can do in that situation really other than quickly whip out your notebook and start scribbling down "decisions" to be made in a couple of minutes based on whats happening second by second in front of you. ie "Blue 4 - Red VC, Yellow 9 - Red VC" that sort of thing. Failing that, if it degrades to the extent that in your opinion each team could potentially be down to 6 players or less, then I'd just go for an abandonment and put that in my report.

It's only happened to me once, and to be honest, I was like a rabbit in headlights for the first 5-10 seconds before my brain kicked into gear. Luckily, it was on a match where I had 2 qualified ARs who were able to give me numbers and confirm what I thought I'd seen. Even then, it only resulted in 2 reds and 2 yellows after the melee died down because that's all that the 3 of us could agree on without guesswork or presumption. :cool:
 
I watched a U18 cup game last year. I knew and had worked with all 3 officials frequently. Centre ref senior with a few years experience. Senior AR great ref with about 20 yrs experience but not a very good AR. Junior AR 16 year old in his second year reffing.

Massive all in broke out near benches towards the end. Both referee and AR1 in the middle breaking it up. To cut the story short once everything was clear after 5 minutes, the only official who had taken numbers was the junior official. 5 red cards issued and then abandoned.

So one advice. Get in there to break it up between the two. As soon as a third person come in, pull back take your notepad out and start taking notes. This not only helps you with observing everything, players see this and most of them won't think about doing anything stupid.

One question? If you say there should have been a lot more Reds but you could only identify two, what were your ARs doing?
 
One, that is great advice. It is such a crazy place to be in, the middle of a melee like that I have definitely learned from this. I have run over 1000 gameGreat s plus and never seen this and it goes to show you that you can always learn something. The proper way to handle it would have been to just put the pen to paper, observe and take notes. It's a bit odd here on my island because we are such a small community and we do alot of things so rogue. Like for real, we are the wild wild west of the USSF referee department, You cannot get anymore west than us so we are isolated and somewhat third world in a lot of things. We do our best, we are passionate and dedicated as a referee team here.. But let me ask you this, where in the world is there like 14 referees that run the leagues? Cause that is how small we are. We make up for how small our referee department is by the amount of passion we have for the game.
 
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