I understand why you have done this.....because you believe the nonsense that by applying 'law 18' or 'managing' the situation you have become a better referee......you haven't. You have failed in the most basic way possible.....failure to apply the LOTG.
Sorry if that's disagreeable or uncomfortable but when you strip it back to the bare essentials that's what it is.
I know all about the compromises refs have to take in order to progress.....and how that leads to these situations where a basic failure is ignored when it suits.....the difference is that I no longer have to play that particular game, and I can see that by making those compromises we fail the very game that we are supposed to protect.
It still doesn't change the basic fact that reckless challenge is a mandatory caution, and failure to follow that through is a fundamental failure in applying the LOTG.
You know that we're there for the player's benefit and not the other way around? You talk about protecting "the game", but whose game is it?
It's perfectly possible to apply LotG fully AND be sympathetic to the players and the individual match in question. In reality this normally comes down to where you draw the line between careless/reckless and reckless/dangerous rather than ignoring things that are firmly in the middle of the reckless category.
For me there are two types of "good game". I love walking off the pitch after a game where there've been lots of tough decisions and feeling happy that I nailed every single one. That's a good game. But, when a match is a little more incident free, and there haven't been any tough calls to make, then walking off with 22 happy blokes who've enjoyed their football is a good game too.
This is where respect comes into it, and communication or management is a big part of showing players respect. I had a cracking Intermediate cup game a few weeks back: I made loads of unpopular decisions, refereed according to my idea of careless and reckless, not theirs, but I kept on talking to the players and the skippers all the way through, telling them what I was thinking, and warning them before they made the tackles as well as whistling afterwards. I ended up booking the skipper: he'd left the ground, won the ball cleanly and one footed, but then caught the chap with his follow through. Skipper was livid - it was his best tackle all season - but because I'd been talking all game long he was happy to listen to me tell him it was the follow-through. He still thought it was a shocker, but he got back into position with a smile on his face and no dissent at all. End of the game he comes up to me and says something along the lines of "you've made some bad decisions there ref, I really don't agree with them, but you were talking to us really well all the way through and it made it easy to deal with, well done!". He bought me a pint after, and the assessor loved my cautions (and non-cautions) too.
Games aren't all about us. They really aren't.
) and give the caution.