The Ref Stop

First Game

Mate, you're being far too hard on yourself!

And what's to say youth football is easier? Not only do you have the players and the coaches on at you but 40+ parents too!

We've all been in the same position you are now, but the important thing is to just keep steadily improving.

As a wise old owl in the refereeing world said to me when I started 'Howard Webb didn't qualify the week before he officiated in the World Cup Final'.

A little extreme in the example but the point is right - to get to the high standards the pros get to think how many thousands of games they have officiated in before - and they all had that trepidation of the first few matches.

Refereeing is a huge learning curve and as long as you're still on an upward trend you're a better referee than the week before.
 
The Ref Stop
zarathustra said:
I've been doing some thinking this afternoon, as well as being a CAR for my girlfriends match.

And I'm contemplating dropping down to the local youth league and putting open age on hold for a while so that I can build up my experience with an "easier" level of football, but I think I will sleep on it and see how I feel.

But after to honest self reflection I've not enjoyed my venture into the referee world.
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Junior football isn't easier. It's like Women's football; it's just different from open age male football. Good luck with whatever you end up doing.
 
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zarathustra said:
Thanks, perhaps "easier" was the wrong word to use.
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If you are considering something less overwhelming join a women's league, I officiate on a couple and for me they are the epitome of what football should be.

Fast, fair, absolutely no dissent, just 2 teams of women/girls who want to play football.

May be easier to fine tune your positioning and decision making before going back to OA male.
 
RegalRef said:
If you are considering something less overwhelming join a women's league, I officiate on a couple and for me they are the epitome of what football should be.

Fast, fair, absolutely no dissent, just 2 teams of women/girls who want to play football.

May be easier to fine tune your positioning and decision making before going back to OA male.
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Thanks, you said it much better than me.

I think the main problem I'm facing is my lack of experience is having an impact on my confidence (which is understandable). And this then leads to me not looking forward to or enjoying the games as I get hung up on making mistakes etc before I've made them.

My thought process to get around this is to build up experience in, as you put it, a less overwhelming evironment. So that in the future I'd better better placed to move back into OA male games, should I decide that's the way I want to go.
 
Its being realistic with your expectations. You sound like you are being harsh on yourself for someone who has only done a small number of games - everyone goes through the stages of learning their trade during their first season. There will be ups and downs; you will learn to apply the laws of the game, how to manage players or when cards are needed, learn to block out the constant nonsense chatter of players/coaches/spectators all while anticipating where the ball is going next, where you need to be to get the best view of the action all doing all this while moving around at pace! You will have games where it starts to come together, there will be games when it doesn't. Either way, learn from them! Do not judge yourself too harshly.

It takes time to all come together. Looking back now, my first games were shocking! Crap teams, crap football and a crap referee!! :D But I learned a lot. Invaluable experience which has stood me in good stead over the past seasons.

As a suggestion, perhaps you could try approaching a more experienced local referee and ask if you can accompany them to a few games - learn how they prepare, watch their game - how they move about the pitch, how they manage situations. And then afterwards you get the chance to ask questions about specific situations. Might give you an idea of where you need to develop yourself. Approaching your local referee society would be a good place to start.
 
Thanks guys, really helpful advice.

Will try speaking to the ref sec and my local ra about getting in touch with a more experienced ref
 
And building on the above advice, it's why a significant number of promising youngsters in my part of the world sign up to assist on the County League. As well as learning the art of the 'other half' of officiating it also allows them to regularly watch more experienced refs first hand and get used to the style, pace and language of OA without being (as much) in the spotlight ....
 
Tbf I imagine if you pointed out whereabouts you're refereeing then you might be able to get some help from here.

Doesn't say where on your page?
 
Thanks guys, after sleeping on it I've decided to keep on with the OA stuff, I'll be damned if I'm going to let a couple of chimps who can't keep their mouths shut for 90 minutes ruin something I want to do. And, as others have said, at this point all I can do is stop being so critical of myself and take it one game at a time. And as long as I don't make the same mistakes every match I'll always improve, even if only slowly to start with.

I also took @SM's advice and got in touch with my local RA secretary, and although most of the members officiate in the same league that I do it's unlikely there'll be anyone available to come and watch my games, he said he will ask around for me, and also speak to some of the guys who do the local Saturday league about me "shadowing" them and things like that.

I also was lucky enough to have my girl friends dad watch me yesterday, following some self evaluation and input from him I think my strengths and weaknesses from yesterday were:

Good Points:
  • Good positioning
  • Got the majority of my calls correct, he said there were a few small things that he might have done differently but nothing major
  • I had no trouble keeping up with play, though I was hanging out towards the end
  • As with my first game, I think I let the game flow quite well, blew when needed but played advantage where applicable
Bad points:
  • I think my communication with the players was better this week, but still needs alot of work
  • I need to be more confident in my decisions
  • I need to get a grip of dissent earlier on
  • Be more confident with my hand signals for corners etc

One thing that he did pick up on was stopping play when players were on the floor, there were no serious injuries, but he felt that I could have left them until the ball went out of play.

@Darius I'm in the Medway region, so if anyone fancies offering some advice when they don't have anything better to do on a Sunday morning I'd be more than happy to get any help I can.
 
Some great advice as always from the forum. I echo the others really, dont be too hard on yourself and learn from mistakes. Whether it be your 1st, 2nd or 500th game you will still make them. How many times do you watch Match of the Day and see a referee make a mistake? Whilst humans are refereeing football matches it will happen, so give your self a break. The best advice came from SM, get yourself out and watch other referee's do there thing. You will see how it should be done and sometimes how it shouldn't be done, you will see him make a mistake and how he deals with it and how he deals with dissent. Before i did my first game i watched about 4 or 5 guys in the middle and got an idea of what i would be up for, i found it really helped.

Keep up the good work!!
 
Just finished my 3rd game.

I felt much better about this performance. My RDO caught the end of it and said I did ok.

My positives and negatives:

Positive
Let the game flow
Kept up with play
Managed to get in good credible locations

Negatives:
Need to concentrate less on the ball and keep an eye on my assistants and the rest of the players
Communicate better with players when substitutions are happening
 
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Well my fourth game (3rd open age) is out of the way.

Quite a good game in terms of football, and I don't think I did too badly, although apparently I game a lot of wrong decisions i.e. giving a goal kick instead of a corner etc.

However, I feel I was in ok positions at the times and I was happy I made the right call each time. After the match the home captain seemed pretty happy, as he reckons I made equally bad decsions for boths teams. So *if* I was wrong I was doing it fairly and consistently, which is something I guess.

Still not too good a dealing with dissent, there was only one time when it warranted a caution, a player ran 40yds to argue with me, but I was dealing with something else so didn't realise the distance he'd covered until one of the other refs who came to watch the last five minutes of the match mentioned it at the end.

He said he had a similar problem with the same team last week, so I think I'll chalk that one up to them being a choppsy team.

Positives
I think I good into good positions for the majority of my decisions

Negatives
Still need to work on communicating my decisions with the players
Need to work on my confidence, but that is one of those things which will come with experience.
 
If it is players, supporters or coaches telling you about being wrong on restarts, I wouldn't lose any sleep at all about it :D

Without NARs you will get the odd one wrong as you cannot see through players - you either give what you see or wait for player reaction to decide whose ball it should be. If neither of those helps and your gut feeling is also shrugging its shoulders at you, just give it nice and confidently to the defending team and run to your next position. :D
 
SM said:
If it is players, supporters or coaches telling you about being wrong on restarts, I wouldn't lose any sleep at all about it :D

Without NARs you will get the odd one wrong as you cannot see through players - you either give what you see or wait for player reaction to decide whose ball it should be. If neither of those helps and your gut feeling is also shrugging its shoulders at you, just give it nice and confidently to the defending team and run to your next position. :D
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This is great advice.

But don't underestimate the power of watching the body language and reactions of players. Both teams can appeal for a goal kick/corner scenario where you're not really sure, and yet without realising they both set up for the corner. They're not the brightest sometimes.

As SM says, if you really have no idea whatsoever, award with great confidence to the defending team.

That's another tip when you talk about confidence, fake it and you start to believe it. The old saying 'confidence breeds confidence' is very true.
 
Yeah, it was only one team that whinged about stuff after the match.

They lost a 3-1 lead in the last 20 minutes or so (none of the goals came from alleged incorrect decisions on my part) so it was just a case of blaming the ref as it's easier than taking responsibility for their own short comings.

And as previously mentioned the away team apparently have form for this type of stuff.
 
You get that mate.

I did a line yesterday, where the away team manager has form for giving officials grief and generally talking nonsense.

It finished 1-0 to the home team, and away team missed 3 open goals.

After full time as we walked off the pitch he's giving it large how there wasn't enough injury time (we played 4 minutes), and how according to him there should be 30 seconds added time per sub (there were 4 subs in total).

This really proves not only do managers talk garbage that doesn't add up, but some blame officials regardless if they lose.

Personally I'd be getting my team back in and giving them the bollocking of a lifetime for wasting enough chances to easily win the game.
 
Yeah I had a manager last week tell me after the game that one of the oppositions goals had come when they kicked the ball out of his keeper's hands.

He must have had cracking eyesight to see that from the half way line when neither I nor any of his own players (including their keeper) noticed.

Still fair play to guy he didn't get on my case about it.
 
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