Two weeks ago during the tournament I was running the line as AR1 on a U19 boy’s game. The center I felt before hand was questionable at best for this game but hey I am not the assignor. We are about 15 minutes into the game when a ball is played long down the field along the line directly in front of me. The defender gathers the ball up. A forward for the other team is chasing him down and coming on fast. The defender plays the ball out of trouble before the attacker gets to him all about 4 feet from me. The attacker takes two more full steps and raises his elbow up right across the defenders face. The defender goes down and has a broken nose. I throw my flag up wildly. The Center hits his whistle and I point for the direction on the foul and start slapping my back pocket. I quickly step onto the field because an entire team is about ready to beat the crap out of the guy that just threw the elbow. The center goes directly to the injured player and calls on medical staff (really an unprepared coach).
Once the “medical staff” is there and we calm the teams down I step back to my line and the call the center over to me. The Center asks what I had on that play. I re-explain what happen to him and tell him I really think there needs to be a red card. (Actually we don’t have any wiggle room on this; it is a strike to the head and is a must red card.) The Center doesn’t say another word and walks over to the player and shows the red card. Of course the player argues with him saying he couldn’t slow down. The Center says “I understand, I normally wouldn’t give a card for that but he wants you to get a red” and points at me….
At halftime we had a long conversation about him throwing me under the bus. I asked him to at least honk the buses horn before throwing me under it. I will go out of my way to NEVER work with this guy again. The rest of the game went downhill from there. The game really was not that difficult (finial was 8-0) but this guy was so far over his head he didn’t even know there was surface to the pool.
Tags: red card, Ref, Referee, socc, Soccer, Soccer Ref, Soccer Referee
May 22, 2009 at 4:16 am |
It sometimes comes as a shock when I tell coaches/players that an Assistant Referee NEVER makes a call. He simply assists the referee in assembling all the information SO THAT THE REFEREE CAN MAKE THE DECISION. Sounds like this referee was equally ill-informed. If he didn’t agree with the send-off, he shouldn’t have done it. It’s that simple.
I too have a “do not work with” list of referees with whom I refuse to work.
– CSR