willowreferee
New Member
Just a general question of your opinion of coaches discussing refereeing decisions on the sideline, not being abusive or shouting at the ref, but discussing their bad calls between coaches. I have been a referee for 8 years myself, and also coach a team.
We had our first game of competitive this morning at U12s, it is a team we have played often and their manager’s 16 year old son tends to referee our games. He has often made some pretty terrible calls in these games, and seems to struggle with the laws of the game, but I would never dream of shouting at him because I remember the feeling of abuse being hurled at you when you’re a child referee, and it’s what made me quit for a few years.
He asked a coach from each side to do the offsides for him, and when I flagged for a blatant one, he said to me with attitude that it wasn’t offside because it had taken a deflection off my defender. I calmly told him back that that’s not the rule, because my defender didn’t deliberately play it, and he laughed at me. That was the only interaction I had with the referee the entire game.
He seemed to get annoyed with me after that, and made wrong call after wrong call against us. Balls that didn’t cross the line were apparently goals, there was endless free kicks that just weren’t, he decided to ignore me calling the offsides and ruled out two of our goals wrongly, and he was smirking the entire time.
I was discussing the calls with my other coach and talking about how the game had descended into blatant cheating, the other manager overheard, stopped the game, and called over his son, and starting shouting at me about how I was abusing a child. His son was clearly embarrassed, asking his dad to just leave it. I was very calm and explained that I hadn’t been abusive once, I was talking on the sidelines with the referee/children/parents nowhere near. I told him as a referee myself who started out at 15 I would never dream of shouting at a ref, but that referees aren’t devoid of criticism and I can discuss bad calls being made with my other coach.
It seemed something had been made of nothing and it made the rest of the game really tense against a team we’ve grown a nice relationship with over the years. Funnily enough, it was the same manager we had to ask to leave a game last season for swearing and screaming at a 14 year old refereeing his first ever game, and who has never refereed since because of it.
I shook the referee’s hand after the game as I always do, explained the rule to him which he had got wrong, which he seemed thankful for and apologised for getting wrong. He was infinitely more mature than his dad, who hurled misogynistic abuse at me in the car park. Classy!
I know coaches often make themselves seem innocent, and I would hold my hands up if I felt I had done anything wrong, but I just wanted to see people’s thoughts on whether discussing a bad referee is abuse, or whether coaches should be able to talk about it.
We had our first game of competitive this morning at U12s, it is a team we have played often and their manager’s 16 year old son tends to referee our games. He has often made some pretty terrible calls in these games, and seems to struggle with the laws of the game, but I would never dream of shouting at him because I remember the feeling of abuse being hurled at you when you’re a child referee, and it’s what made me quit for a few years.
He asked a coach from each side to do the offsides for him, and when I flagged for a blatant one, he said to me with attitude that it wasn’t offside because it had taken a deflection off my defender. I calmly told him back that that’s not the rule, because my defender didn’t deliberately play it, and he laughed at me. That was the only interaction I had with the referee the entire game.
He seemed to get annoyed with me after that, and made wrong call after wrong call against us. Balls that didn’t cross the line were apparently goals, there was endless free kicks that just weren’t, he decided to ignore me calling the offsides and ruled out two of our goals wrongly, and he was smirking the entire time.
I was discussing the calls with my other coach and talking about how the game had descended into blatant cheating, the other manager overheard, stopped the game, and called over his son, and starting shouting at me about how I was abusing a child. His son was clearly embarrassed, asking his dad to just leave it. I was very calm and explained that I hadn’t been abusive once, I was talking on the sidelines with the referee/children/parents nowhere near. I told him as a referee myself who started out at 15 I would never dream of shouting at a ref, but that referees aren’t devoid of criticism and I can discuss bad calls being made with my other coach.
It seemed something had been made of nothing and it made the rest of the game really tense against a team we’ve grown a nice relationship with over the years. Funnily enough, it was the same manager we had to ask to leave a game last season for swearing and screaming at a 14 year old refereeing his first ever game, and who has never refereed since because of it.
I shook the referee’s hand after the game as I always do, explained the rule to him which he had got wrong, which he seemed thankful for and apologised for getting wrong. He was infinitely more mature than his dad, who hurled misogynistic abuse at me in the car park. Classy!
I know coaches often make themselves seem innocent, and I would hold my hands up if I felt I had done anything wrong, but I just wanted to see people’s thoughts on whether discussing a bad referee is abuse, or whether coaches should be able to talk about it.
