The Ref Stop

Ball being cleared out of play

elliopops

New Member
Level 9 Referee
Team A is winning late on. Team A keep smashing the ball out of play as far as they can, to waste time but without being punished. Is there any way to deal with this or is it just stop your watch and wait?
 
The Ref Stop
Stop the watch and wait. If the ball in on the pitch then they are entitled to kick it as hard and as far as they want. I'd make it really obvious that you are adding time back on.

If the ball is (clearly) off the pitch and they do it, then I would be cautioning them.
 
I don’t think there’s much you can do. You can’t tell a player what they can and can’t do.

I’d be making it very obvious that every second will be getting added on. If the other team are getting frustrated with it, they’d be wise to arrange to get the ball back in play as quick as they can (multi ball type system) but this won’t always be possible.

I’d say this is a fairly rare occurrence. Think I’ve only ever had it happen once to me. And in all honesty, let’s just say the opposition sorted it out by giving a ‘warning’ to the team doing it
 
Always an interesting one when it's the away team doing it with the home team's match balls too... but we can't stop them if the ball was in play when they kicked it.
 
I had the exactly same situation last month. It's an U11 cup game and a boy from the winning home team did this several times. I've added enough time for compensation. I explained to the away team coach he was still unhappy and though I should have talked to the kids to stop it.
 
Team A is winning late on. Team A keep smashing the ball out of play as far as they can, to waste time but without being punished. Is there any way to deal with this or is it just stop your watch and wait?
Tell them that each time they do it, you'll add on twice the time it takes to get the ball back. If they object, you can point out that the allowance for playing time lost is at the referee's discretion.

Don't actually do it ('cos that would be wrong) - just tell them you will. :D
 
Tell them that each time they do it, you'll add on twice the time it takes to get the ball back. If they object, you can point out that the allowance for playing time lost is at the referee's discretion.

Don't actually do it ('cos that would be wrong) - just tell them you will. :D
It has never happened to me but a variant of this is not wrong. Here is the explaination to stop them doing it.

When the ball goes out in a 'normal' way, on average about 10 seconds is lost to play (a wild guess, but maybe a little more). If the ball is deliberately kicked into the next suburb, I stop the watch straight away and only restart just before restart so only a couple of seconds is lost. So your action is actually working against you.
 
These are the things that make me HATE competitions that preclude adding time. (I know it isn't within the Laws, but at least in the US they do it anyway to cram games onto fields.) The only time I have ever given a caution without writing it down was in one of those games, where going through the formal caution for process for a DR caution was going to just waste more time and work to the miscreant's favor. (And I figured even I could probably remember one number for 3 minutes . . . .) It worked and the DRs stopped, but I really HATE losing that tool.
 
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