Just a few things this morning from the past couple of weeks.
Scenario A:
Men’s college spring game between two teams that are traditional rivals. It is 2-0 Green over Blue with 20 minutes left and the game is, in my mind, going swimmingly. The fouls are reasonably honest fouls, the challenges are strong but fair, and I had gotten good feedback from an informal assessor at half time on selling a penalty kick.
Thirty yards from goal Green #12 receives a pass. He begins an out-cut to take the ball to the corner. Blue #13 is coming from Green’s 2 o’clock at full speed with eyes on the body and not the ball. Blue #28 is coming at full speed at Green’s 9 o’clock. Again, his eyes are on the shoulders/head region and not his hips or the ball. I am cringing as I see Blue is planning to smash him and the game is going to go to shit.
Green, dips his shoulder, squirts, forward so #13 misses him, and then he spins off the contact from #28 and sends a bit of a hip to hip contact so #28 flies over him and into the other Blue defender. #12 takes another two steps forward, plays a perfect ball across the top of the box to an teammate running onto it who then pikes a shot.
What should you do to the two knuckleheads who tried to crush #12?
Scenario B:
This is at a U-16/U-17 identification and college scouting tournament. You’re having your lunch between two fields. The tournament finally listened to ref feedback and got us good lunches this year. Your feet are up and you’re relaxing as you watch a very good U-17 girls game. All of a sudden you hear the following conversation:
“I like my 16 year olds with little butts and busty up top”
“I rather have them have some junk in the trunk and needing only a training bra…”
What the hell are you listening to? Is this a precursor to a mandatory reporting incident.
Scenario C:
U-16 women’s game at the same tournament. The game has just been a choppy, chippy, low skill game. The best players on the field might become bench players for decent D-3 programs. White #3 had picked up a caution in the 71st minute for being a general douchebag by kicking the ball into the stands after she had been called for a simple foul. It is now the 88th minute and White #3 goes in for a high and late challenge. It is not a red card foul as she is going in fairly slow but it is a foul that needs to be addressed. A yellow card which leads to a red card is completely justifiable. Can anything else work?
Scenario A was a massive sigh of relief as soon as Green #12 squirted out of the collision with the ball at his feet and his head on his shoulders. He was justifiably pissed at being targeted. I spoke to the two Blue players and told them that if I saw a bad throw-in, I’m cautioning them. They got lucky on missing #12. The rest of the ref crew, as well as the assessor and the crew that had the next game talked about how to manage the situation. A few of us thought cautions were justifiable even if the Blue players missed the collision for attempting to trip. The logic is that a thrown punch is a red card even if the punch never lands.
Scenario B is not a mandatory reporting incident. It was a pair of D-2 college coaches talking to each other about their preferences for recruits. One coach would rather have lower floor but higher ceiling players. The little butts and busty tops means the girl with a significant commitment to the weight room could add a whole lot of weight to her thighs, butt and hips while dropping a significant amount body fat. The other coach wanted players who had already invested a lot of time in the weight room and had gotten to the baseline of strength needed to play college ball.
Scenario C is interesting. A red card via a second caution is 100% defensible. It is the book answer. However as referees continue to advance in their skills, we are repeatedly told that we need to know the rule book very well in order to be able to bend it when the game calls for it to be bent. The question that the referee asked herself was “does the game need a red card with 3 minutes left?”
The game’s entire point was to showcase these players to college coaches. The score was irrelevant as it would not impact any post-season seedings. The referee decided to take a risk. She gave #3 a choice. She could either tell the referee that she had a serious head injury and would need to sit for the rest of the game OR she could take a yellow card and thus get a red card and sit for the tournament. All of a sudden, #3 is jogging off the field, and the referee tells her “hold your head, you’re hurt”. The opposing coach smiled and laughed as he realized what the ref was doing. I’m looking at the center referee trying to get a clue and then it dawns on me what she just did so I explain to the coach why #3 owes the center a very big favor at some point as she just did her a solid.
Anonymous At Work
In A, sounds like an informal warning to coach and/or players is warranted (if you gonna go for a guy, don’t stare him down).
In B, is there a soccer equivalent to football’s “Sweep Right X [X being the person on the sideline to be runover]”?
In C, have her hit the showers somehow. French soccer style, grasp shin in pain until something happens?
delosgatos
Not sure what I’d do to the first two knuckleheads, but boy howdy I’d love to see the video.
JayR
Regarding C, why do this favor at all. Isn’t “this player is a headcase who gives up stupid and/or dangerous fouls” what the college coaches are there to find out about? And conversely, isn’t this the sort of lesson the player needs to have slapped into her before she actually hurts somebody?
Lee
A) I think I would agree with the cautions for both. Maybe just for the simple fact you don’t want to game to go to shit in the last few minutes. Sometimes just talking to knuckleheads is not enough.
B). LOL I knew exactly what you were referring to. When my oldest played soccer she had a female coach that was very direct in her suggestions to her players. She had some similar suggestions to her players
C) Outstanding work for the center. Players can get caught up and sometimes a little cooling off is all they need to get their head screwed back on straight.
Punchy
Scenario D: SKC’s Dom Freakin Dwyer is TRIPPED, clearly and overtly visibly, 3 steps within the penalty box in possession of the ball, and THE REF CALLS NOTHING. No foul, no penalty kick, no nothing. Announcers are beside themselves with astonishment.
Are the MLS refs the worst, or worstest ever?
Robert Sneddon
A) Making it clear to the two Blues you saw what they intended to do is enough. The chilling effect will last out the game with only a few minutes to go, the Green player sees you talking to his sandwich which makes it clear you’ve got his back and letting the advantage kept the game flowing rather than blowing a stop so you can card them.
The use of the terms Green and Blue made me smile though — I was born and raised near Glasgow through the times of the Old Firm rivalries.
nalbar
Richard, I just wanted you to know how much I enjoy the referee posts. They give me insight into soccer that I never had before.
.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I actually understood pretty much precisely – in terms of what strength work should be/already had been done – what was being discussed in scenario B because of the context. But it’s an excellent example of how language should be used cautiously, as well as how context has to be considered. As does potential audience that might overhear the language.
Those comments are likely to be perfectly understood by the people who were likely to be in the vicinity at that specific kind of tournament, when made by that specific type of speaker. But, if adults (especially but not necessarily limited to men) use that kind shop talk, they’d best be damned certain that it’s used only where it cannot be misunderstood, or they can find themselves reported by someone who isn’t a mandatory but has some concerns about the interest of adults involved in youth sports.
My immediate response at reading B was: obviously recruiting shop talk about athletic development, but I hope to hell that the talkers knew exactly who was in the vicinity of that discussion. And had the context not been specified before I read the exchange, I could easily have wondered if you might have heard a precursor.
Amir Khalid
@Lee:
A) In the end, no foul was successfully committed. So it’s hard for a ref to to justify a yellow card for either defender. I think the verbal warning was the right action.
C) Was there a limit on substitutions per match for this tournament, and had the team already reached it? Would the player leaving the pitch reduce her team to ten players?
Richard Mayhew
@JayR: The college coaches did not need the referee giving a red card to determine if this player was a head case player (having reffed her before, she usually is a hard player but not a dirty player). They had 85 minutes of play to make that determination. She was just off.
She knew she should have gotten a red, the referee made that very clear. Her coach made that very clear that the ref was doing her a solid.
The ref’s objective was to get the last 3 minutes of the game completed safely. That meant White #3 had to get off the field. It really did not matter how she got off the field. Now White #3 knows the center did her a solid and the center has White #3 in her back pocket for future matches as there is now a strong expectation of a reciprocal relationship established.
Is this a move the referee can get away with in a professional game? No. Is it a move that can be pulled off at a D-1 or D-2 college match? No. Is it a risk that the referee will take on a Regional play-off match or an upgrade assessment match? No.
Is it a risk worth taking in a showcase tournament where the temperature of the game is not about to blow off the top with 3 minutes left? Once I realized what she was doing, I thought it made sense.
Amir Khalid
@Robert Sneddon:
As long as there are Catholics and Protestants in Glasgow, the former will always support Celtic and the latter will always support Rangers.
Richard Mayhew
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): As a side note, both coaches were women in their late 20’s/early 30s and I and another ref from my crew were the only ones withing hearing distance. So within context, yeah, it was 100% appropriate … and five minutes later they were asking us for any players that we saw that they should be checking out.
Lymie
The casual acceptance of sexualized discussion of young women’s bodies, NO MATTER HOW WELL UNDERSTOOD BY THE AUDIENCE, is just the kind of crappy language that spills over into every day life. Sheesh. There really is no excuse for it. As to the commenter who remarked that the daughter’s female coach used the same language, tough shit, women can be misogynists, too.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Richard Mayhew: I suspected the coaches were most likely women, and found the conversation entirely appropriate in context even had they been men.
@Lymie: By “appropriate” I referred specifically to the mandatory reporting question. But I was careless when I omitted mention of your important point:
I should have addressed that issue as well, and I’m glad that you did. Sexualized language used by women isn’t necessarily misogynistic, but it’s a demonstration of just how acceptable it is in US culture to describe young females in sexualized terms. And I agree, it needs to stop. Pushing back against it /calling out its use every time can be both tiresome (tough shit) and tiring, but it’s the only hope for starting a shift in the culture.
It’s the same reason I get quite tiresome about asking people to refrain from comments like
almost every. fcking. time I read them. They casually, and no doubt often quite unintentionally, mock mental illnesses. People die from these conditions every day, and hearing/reading such joking/mocking comments can lead to both people blaming themselves for living with a chronic disease and avoiding treatment for fear of being the object of fun.
Language matters, people; please use it thoughtfully.
/vent
VoiceOfUnreason
@Robert Sneddon:
Older than that.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-rocking-the-byzantine-empire-113325928/?no-ist
redshirt
Breaking sports news!!!! Tom Brady suspension upheld. America girds itself for another 8 months of Deflategate talk.
benw
@redshirt: God, the Patriots and/or Goodell are the worst. Would it have killed you to just use regularly inflated balls, Tom? Look at Peyton over here and try to be a little more like him, maybe. And Rog? Just fucking let it go.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@redshirt: @benw:
Election season distraction!!
Richard Mayhew
@benw: You do know that the balls weren’t deflated when anyone who was not paid to produce that result looked at the evidence.
benw
@Richard Mayhew: hey, everyone, look at the Patriots fan over here! :)
I refuse to waste precious CPU cycles actually knowing anything about Ballghazi, when I could be using them to make lame jokes on BJ.
redshirt
@Richard Mayhew: It’s a joke of a situation and that NFL is so heavy handed is ludicrous.
I hope Brady appeals and this goes to the SC where the new justice favors for Tommy Football.
currants
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): But why MUST it be a conversation using language that generally has sexual connotations? I despise people who will not bother to use accurate and efficient language, relying instead on lazy-ass terminology. Yes, I know it’s about physical qualifications for sport. But god-almighty I am tired of people–men AND women–assuming that because they are only talking about physical qualifications for sport it doesn’t matter if they’re using language that also has crude sexual connotations. And I say that as a woman, as a mother of girls and grandmother of same, and MOST of all as a former coach for U19 and U12 girls (state and town levels respectively).
ETA @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Well said. And yes, I should have read the whole thread first.
currants
@Lymie: YES.
pseudonymous in nc
A: stern words with both Blues (and captain) and they’re on a short rope from then on.
B: it’s weird and creepy to talk about the physique of young women in a sexualised way, and coaches need to stop doing it. I’ve seen similar weird shit in writeups of male college recruits, albeit focused on their character.
C: given the circumstances, the hook from the touchline probably works better than the red. I don’t think there are any unlearned lessons from not getting sent off.
J R in WV
@benw:
But the NFL can’t prove that those balls had inflation/deflation events before or during the game. The equipment that the NFL supplied to the refs was faulty and not tested for accuracy.
I hate the Patriots as much as anyone, and have no respect for Brady as a human being.
But you can’t use uncertified equipment to check inflation pressure on game balls, especially when at least one of the gauges was clearly damaged. If a road patrol policeman gives you a speeding ticket with radar/laser equipment that hasn’t been certified by some testing facility in forever, you can get that ticket thrown out by most judges.
There is more riding on this decision than on the average speeding ticket. The NFL sent those Refs out to do professional business with shoddy, broken, uncertified testing equipment. I am amazed that anyone involved hasn’t thrown this case out for lack of real evidence.
Let alone the temperature change / pressure change issues. Simple physics I learned in high school proves that if the temp of the balls changed at all, the pressure in those balls will change as well. If ambient air pressure (the weather barometric pressure) changes, the reading on the ball pressure will change also.
Amateurish all the way around on the part of the NFL. Hope the owners throw Roger out of the cushy job he isn’t doing.
g
@Punchy:
Well as a Quakes fan I was less incensed, but Marrufo (the Ref) is never very consistent, he seemed to allow a lot of sliding tackles in the middle of the park. It was nice to get the favorable calls from him this time;)
Lymie
@currants:
Thank you, yes. And disappointing in Mayhew who is generally good on these points.