AR1 today for men's O-30 1st division. Just before kickoff, a late arriving player gives his card to his team manager, who gives it to me. I turn it over and the card expired three months ago. "Ah, it's expired." "I have two cards and I must have grabbed the wrong one. Can you just look it up on line?" "Sorry. Card must be physically present to win." As the game begins, I hear him telling his manager that he'll have to go home to get the card. Moments later, the manager says to me, "Flakiest guy I've ever known." The game was 0-0 at half, 3-0 ten minutes later and it ended 3-4.
It was a different sport, but today I finally got a coach to admit to my face what we all always suspect. His knowledge of a rule was completely incorrect and we got into an argument/debate about it, and he said that he would rather a referee get a rule incorrect as long as it benefitted what he thins the rule is and would favor his team, rather than have a referee who gets a call correct but it goes against his team It was a pretty pathetic display and admission
I thought you were going to say that he went to his bag and got a different card which happened to have a different name on it. That's always fun.
I have a digital one on my phone. Can you just check that? So this is non-negotiable? These request-inquiries were repeated twice by same player during team check-in prior to a mens amateur match on Saturday afternoon. His manager-captain tells the referee, they will not accept it, we have tried each trick in the book. My antennae pings. Player replied this league is so strict as if we are playing pros. The manager-captain tells referee to call the offside early, so we dont have to run. The digital/negotiation then follows the referee when we are checking the other team and asks again - so this is non-negotiable, right? Right, replies the referee, without showing any annoyance. The manager-captain of the other team, after checking in, provides unsolicited guidance on their opponents - dont listen to them ref, they will tell you what to do ... they have 26 cards so far ... If the referee hadnt checked the league table prior to arriving to the field, now he does. We start the match at scheduled kick-off time. There were a total of 21 fouls whistled and 2 yellow cards sanctions issued, in the first half; 10 fouls by the negotiator team and 11 by the will tell you team. I have flag duty 1 and with 1 sub (sitting in stand in the shade), I keep focus by counting fouls. Oh yes, one goal was scored. A total of 22 fouls whistled in second half, the digital/negotiator arrives 7 minutes before end of regulation, 5 more yellows issued until the 88th minute. Player recklessly challenges and both go down, the victim gets up and rugby tackles the perp while perp is clutching his ankle. Melee and lots of shouting, FUs mainly. Referee sanctions the two main combatants with red. Time expires and referee decides not to book the TMIs (third men in). The challenger is hurt so is being escorted by his teammates off the field to the stand, right across the halfway line. The victim has the record stuck on FU to the perp. I was told by the FU's teammate, the digital negotiator, you lost control of the match. His captain-manager tells me "You must retire" I respond, look closely at my badge - it reads emeritus!
I was refereeing all day Saturday and the two others guys I was with all day, we didn’t even hear about the potential biggest (political) news in recent history until the evening. Didn’t even hear anything from people all day at the games we were at. I’m sure the world stood still for a few hours there with every news station talking about it, but refereeing insulated us from all of it. Probably some of the few people in the country who hadn’t heard of it happening
As opposed to me who heard about it in the locker room 90 minutes before San Antonio FC vs Deportivo Saprissa and had to try to control the political junkie in me because I needed to focus and not go down a rabbit hole with no real new information.
Nice, in todays age being completely ignorant of major news is a strange feeling. Same thing happened when Kobe Bryant died. Still remember was doing games all day and didn’t hear about it until getting home that night even though it was probably the biggest news in the world at that time
Last night I was the referee for the UPSL Division 1 final locally. After the game one of the players said, "I've seen you on TV. You're an AR." "You guys are slow enough they let me do the middle."
Google Translate tells me this means "with eggs." I assume it actually means "with many eggs." Would it more apt to say "con grande ovarios"?
Today more u11-12 solos so I wore the pink uniform. A few coaches before the game made snide remarks like oh great we get a pink ref today, is that even a real color. After the game: wow ref usually we get refs who don’t know what they’re doing, you’re best ref I’ve ever had in any game with these ages, sorry about the pink comments
My local area wears pink a decent amount of the time. Two years ago, the girls high school union in Iowa issued pink shirts and socks for state tournament officials as an associate director was batting breast cancer and the union’s logo is black and pink. We’ve generally stopped wearing the pink socks (even though the state says we can - just need to have the whole crew wear same color and style of uniform) after college uniforms went to black socks, but we still wear the pink shirts and get compliments whenever we wear them.
When the pink jerseys first came out, it was supposed to be "only" for the month of October. One of the referees who does mostly solo games actually reached out to his assignor if he could do a game on Nov 1 in pink and was predictably shot down. Why do folks have such low self esteem and do this? It gets cold here in November anyway, so just wear your short sleeve another week and shut up...it's not like the coaches will be reporting this. Nowdays, we have full crews wearing pink in various tournaments . How times change.
I have a full set of the pink Score brand uniforms (all paid for by a few of my assignors a few years back). The cut is nowhere near as good as the OSI ones, and pink is my favorite uniform color and can match the whistle I use, but the hell I'm dropping another $40-50 on an OSI uniform
"There are radios in the locker room for you." The radios were Midland walkie-talkies with secret service style ear pieces that were all PTT. We declined to use them and emailed the assignor to make sure there isn't any blowback for "the referees chose to not use radios. We provided them..."
I’m somewhat of a radio snob. If it’s not Vokkero, I don’t want to use it. Thankfully, my brother gave me his set of 4 Vokkeros since he has stepped away from the game for the time being.
Continuing this, I think pink as a color has some sort of disarming effect on people. This is even carrying over to my whistle (I use a bright pink whistle) and have had players say they like my whistle, and this weekend with another sport I do, at high school scrimmages some spectator said “hey you’re the pink whistle ref, you did my daughters club games this spring, she said pink whistle guy is her favorite ref” Unlike the red uniform which everyone hates because it’s a conflict color
Just absolutely could not get a coaching staff to understand why they weren't getting a penalty kick today in a girls varsity scrimmage. Ball rolling towards the endline through the penalty area, two players chasing it. The ball rolls out of play. The players follow it out of play. The defender (blue) fouls the attacker (white) while both are out of play. My partner (lead in the dual), blows his whistle and gives the offender a yellow card. We set up to restart with a goal kick. I'm standing next to the white bench for the goal kick and they are apopletic that they don't have a penalty. I was probably too technical initially- "Coach, the ball was out of play for a goal kick, then the foul happened during a dead ball situation, we don't change the restart, we just card the offender." That got us nowhere. I tried again and got this high level repartee: "How about this, Coach, did the foul occur in the penalty area?" "No" "Was the ball even in the penalty area at the time of the foul?" "No" "Why would you get a penalty kick?" "Because she fouled her!"
You explained it exactly correctly the first time. He does not understand the rules. And trying any further is a fruitless endeavor because he will not change his mind. Cut your losses after the first explanation. Really sad how you give a coach the explanation you aren’t even required to give and he refuses to listen