what would you do?

[haywain]

assistant referee, sussex colleges cup final.

about 15 yards in front of me, (towards the far goal) and 5 yards in-field, as i stand at the half way line, yellow defender slides in and makes what could have been regarded as a reckless tackle on red attacker with red player falling onto yellow player as a result. as red player extricates himself from the two man heap he has a bit of a retaliatory scuffle with the red defender, not quite swinging a punch but certainly 'adopting an aggressive attitude'

referee has blown for the foul and gone over to speak to the yellow defender, at some length, but doesn't book him. he then prepares for the free kick to be taken and i realise that he is not going to speak to the red player. (by now this is about 2 minutes after the original incident).

would you flag to get the referee's attention to let him know what you saw or just leave well alone. (no pre-match instruction that covered this)

?

 

[Padfoot]

Unless the red player actually swung a punch.....and presuming the ref had a decent view of the afters, I'd leave well alone.

 

[Pierluigi]

I think this is where as assistants we can look at trying to assist rather than insist. So presumably you let it go and I would say you did the right thing. The only situation you might perhaps want to get involved is if the other team start to go mental at the decision, then you can in effect get the referee 'out of jail'. But as long as the other team were happy then I would see no need to disrupt a heated situation further!

 

[Brian Hamilton]

If you saw the initial contact, did you support the referee's whistle to indicate that an offence had occurred, by agitating your flag? If you did and as they approach the scene of the incident, then you can call them over and let them decide what to do, based on the information you provide.

As described, you are left without any way into this situation without it looking like you're trying to push the referee in a certain direction.

 

[haywain]

thanks for the feedback, guys

the referee blew at the initial contact and, since he was closer to the incident than me, i decided not to flag. recollection is that referee never made eye contact with me as he moved towards the incident, presumably because he was certain of what he had seen. incident happened about ten minutes before half-time and i mentioned the afters (and players number, 36...it's still in my head ) at half-time.

i did have one guy in the stand behind me telling me to 'help the referee out', a view that i was sympathetic to, but one which i never felt that i had the opportunity to carry out at the time.

 

[Brian Hamilton]

thanks for the feedback, guys

the referee blew at the initial contact and, since he was closer to the incident than me, i decided not to flag. recollection is that referee never made eye contact with me as he moved towards the incident, presumably because he was certain of what he had seen. incident happened about ten minutes before half-time and i mentioned the afters (and players number, 36...it's still in my head ) at half-time.

i did have one guy in the stand behind me telling me to 'help the referee out', a view that i was sympathetic to, but one which i never felt that i had the opportunity to carry out at the time.

You often get speccys and or players suggesting you "help out the referee". It's usually because they disagree with his decision

 

[Southend-ref]

I've always been told when doing the line 'no surprises'. If nobody has complained about it, let it go - nobody is less happy as a result. The only time when I would intervene in this situation is if I had the luxury of a comms system as you could inform the referee instantly without making a scene. You might get away with it if you have buzzer flags but if not definitely not because as it's in the other half of the field, if you flag and the ref doesn't see you but spectators do then you could get all sorts of trouble.

 

[CapnBloodbeard]

If the referee can see that 2 players are involved in a confrontation and he only chose to speak to 1 player then, IMO, that's his decision. Need to respect that. It may be that he felt the red player didn't do anything to escalate the situation or wasn't being aggressive, just that he was the victim.

I'd only look to intervene here if you saw something that you believed absolutely needed to be dealt with (eg red pushed him to the ground, tried to kick him or otherwise had an escalated level of aggression the ref may have missed)