I have a busy week ahead of me. The first half is full of refereeing. During the second half of the week, my wife and I are going to a kidless undisclosed location with minimal internet connection (just enough to Skype Grandma and Grandpa once a day to make sure the kids are getting appropriately spoiled.) So I am not sure how much interesting things I can write about this week.
Over the weekend, I worked a game with a referee who was telling me about an interesting situation he had earlier in the week. What are your thoughts on this scenario?
Red and White don’t like each other. They are both good scholarship driven programs. Both are usually competing for one of the last bids into the NCAA play-offs. They have a history of having ugly games.
In the fourth minute, Red #8 makes a very hard but legal challenge against White #2 in front of the White bench. Red #8 hooks the ball behind his knee, trapped between his thigh and calf. White #2 continues to go through the ball, and then goes airborne with an audible “SNAP”.
The referee stops play as White #2 writhes on the ground and calls in the trainer. 10 minutes of stoppage ensues as White #2 right leg is broken and he is prepped for transport. After White is in the ambulance, the referee shows a yellow card to Red #8. The card was written up as Unsporting Behavior.
One final piece of information, Red #8 completed the game and he was only fouled three times (once hard). The referee ended up giving three more cautions and no red cards.
What are your thoughts on this? Are your thoughts different if the broken leg challenge happened in the 88th minute? Are your thoughts different if the incident happened in the far corner 80 yards from the White bench?
My thoughts are below the fold.
As a referee, our first job is to keep the players safe, and our second job is to keep the game fair. Everything after that is a detail. Good referees need to know the rule book(s) in order to know how the book can be bent, twisted, and stretched to further the goals of safe and fair. This was definately a scenario where the rule book is being pushed to find its safe word.
The tackle itself was a clean challenge. An injury does not correlate with a foul. Red #8 was extremely sporting about the entire event as he immediate went to render assistance/moral support, and then quickly got the hell away and behind several of his teammates when told to back-out. He did nothing wrong.
Even though he did nothing wrong, he needed to be cautioned. The card was given not to punish, sanction or modify Red #8’s behavior. It was given to modify White’s future probable behavior. The card was given to protect #8 from getting targetted and crushed at some point during the game by a sophomore sub who knew that it was his job to make a hideous red card tackle. Sure that would have resulted in a suspension but that is a “good” suspension as seen by the sophomore sub who was playing 10 minutes a game anyways.
The referee knew he is dealing with a bunch of hyper competitive 19 to 22 year olds with more testorone than sense. He knew that he had them for another 86 minutes. He believed that given a very soft yellow probably would keep him from having to give a very hard red. In his mind, it was a player protection caution. The only downside to this caution is that cautions accumulate in the NCAA, so five yellows equals a one game suspension. Red #8 burned one of his cautions for a non-foul, non-misconduct. [EDIT V. 2] The ref burned one of Red #8’s cautions for a non-foul, non-misconduct.
Now if the incident happened in the 88th minute, I am not thinking yellow. If there is more than a one goal differential, I would think of making a comment to Red’s coach that I thought I noticed #8 was cramping up or looked tired in order to get him out of the game and to the safety of his bench. If the challenge happened 80 yards from the bench, I might be able to get away without a yellow as the coach and subs aren’t fired up although if it happened 80 yards away in the 4th minute, I might have some wiggle room but a yellow could be attractive.
If this happened in a women’s game, I am not worried about in game retaliation to anywhere near the same degree as I would be in a men’s game. I would be worried about next game retaliation where the referee would have no idea why someone just got Nancy Kerrigan’ed. If this a younger game (U-14), the yellow would not be needed, while a U-17 game the yellow would not have protected Red #8 anyways as teenagers are truly dumb and have not figured out mutually assured destruction yet.
Baud
Non-American football. Don’t know enough to offer an opiniion.
Have fun on your getaway. You deserve a rest.
brantl
I don’t understand what your explanation of “Red #8 hooks the ball behind his knee, trapped between his thigh and calf. White #2 continues to go through the ball, and then goes airborne with an audible “SNAP”.”, has to do with the damage to the White player. Was the ball trapped between the other player’s thigh and calf of one leg or both? You give no information about how White kicked.
WereBear
Sounds like a good call, the way you describe.
I laughed out loud when you talked about teens being dumb. I said for years “their brains don’t work right!” and science has now supported my theory :)
brantl
No the referee burned it for him. As you said, Red #8 did nothing wrong.
OzarkHillbilly
I would have to say the teams drive the decision.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Women who play ice hockey are less patient. That said, there are a lot fewer legal ways to injure an opponent than there are in men’s hockey, since it’s no-check. (Which I have to explain to newcomers does not mean no contact.) Problems generally start with something that should have been called a penalty. The refs are notorious for letting things escalate over the course of a game without ever drawing the line anywhere.
It will be interesting to see what the WCHA is like this year. Two of the three coaches that let (or encouraged) their teams get out of control, Shannon Miller at Minnesota-Duluth and Nate Handrahan at Ohio State, were let go last season. The Handrahan case was especially ugy, since he was essentially fired for sexual harassment of his own players. So things might lighten up across the league, except when North Dakota is in town.
Just One More Canuck
Richard, I appreciate all of your posts on soccer – as the father of a daughter in U10 (and someone who never played except in gym class a million years ago), they give me a lot into what goes on on the field.
OzarkHillbilly
Hmmmm…. I smell something burning… It smells kinda like…. Yep, it’s another Presidential dream reduced to ashes by reality.
richard mayhew
@Just One More Canuck: Just be aware that good refereing at the U-10/U-12 level (where your daughter is playing now) looks very different than good refereeing at the college and professional level. At U-10/U-12, I am very fast on the fouls and very slow on the cards, while in college, I am the opposite. I have very different expecations as to what a 20 year old man should be able to play through than an 11 year old girl, and I know that the tools and thought processes that leads to a safe and fair college game that also makes the players/coaches happy leads to a bunch of crying 11 year olds.
One of my worst games in my life was a U-11 girls game. I had done a college men’s game that morning and my two ARs had just gotten off of a D-1 college men’s games. We were at Field X to do two games. The first one was the U-11 girls game, the next one was a men’s open league full of ex-college and former low-level pro players. Our foul expectation was anchored at scholarship level college fouls. 15 minutes into the game, I finally realized we were working a U-11 girls game after the third girl left crying. I totally screwed the pooch on that one.
OzarkHillbilly
Jerry Jones on how he felt when Tony Romo went down: “Just about as low as a crippled cricket’s ass.”
xenos
As a parent of a U-17 girl playoff theist competitive matches she can find, I appreciate the insight into the art ofofficiating. But I am terrified of her getting injured like this. Sounds like good call based on good psychology.
Richard Mayhew
@brantl: Corrected — good point on who did the burning. The Red Coach accepted the caution as he knew the trade-off was a caution or a probable broken leg. He can coach around a player carrying a weak caution far easier than he can coach around a broken leg (worst comes to worse, he has always scheduled a non-conference cupcake game as the last game of his regular season, so he can tell Red #8 to get his 5th caution in the 2nd to last regular season game to sit the suspension on the cupcake game).
As the challenge was described to me, both players were converging on the ball. White was coming straight down the sideline while Red was coming from the center of the field at a fairly shallow angle so he was in White’s field of view for a decent amount of time. Red made a sliding challenging in front of White and kept his legs/cleats down. He hooked the ball with his lower leg and stopped it as White attempted to bring his foot through the ball. The rest of White’s body was moving at full speed forwards while his kicking leg experienced immediate and painful deceleration as the ball did not move out of Red’s hooked leg.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@brantl: I hope RM will comment, but I picture it as though Red caught the ball with his leg while White was about to kick it. Voila! Lucy with her football, and Charlie Brown gets a broken leg. There was no intent in this case to do harm, unlike with Lucy, just an attempt to get the ball.
Given the history, I think the refs decisions were correct – even though Red did nothing “wrong”. It’s like a warning to both pitchers in baseball after one side unintentionally hits a batter when there’s a previous history between them.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who hasn’t played soccer since he was about 10.)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: And, as usual, if I had waited a little while longer, it would have been clear. ;-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Just One More Canuck
@richard mayhew: There’s one referee in her league who, when he calls a foul, will speak to the girl and explain very clearly (but kindly) what the foul was, and asks if she understands (apparently he’s a retired teacher) – everyone loves it when we see him walking onto the field
The great thing about the girls at my daughter’s age is that are (mostly) just girls having fun, even though it is a competitive league. Yesterday, My daughter took a ball to the face (total accident) and the girl on the other team who kicked it was upset that she might have hurt her and apologised to her
Redshift
@OzarkHillbilly: And the photo heading that article, yikes! In the words of Trump, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”
MomSense
Thoughts? Glad my kids are runners.
Wag
@OzarkHillbilly:
From the Guardian article
So dramatic has been Walker’s demise that “no one” registered more support than him for 2016 among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in the CNN poll.
I love the taste of wing nut tears in my coffee
DLew On Roids
One of the many things that makes soccer a more attractive sport than football–to me, anyway–is that the referee is not expected to be an automaton implementing an increasingly precise rulebook as all humanity is squeezed out of the sport. Nevertheless, I would not have issued a yellow to Red #8 here. Red did nothing wrong. By getting a yellow early in the match, Red will be especially careful for the rest of the match, pulling out of tackles for fear of an error getting him a red. This is why yellows to CBs in professional soccer can be game-changers.
Instead, I’d have given verbal instructions to both Red and White before play resumes that I considered the play to be a terrible accident not predicated on any reckless or unsportsmanlike play by Red #8. I would also inform the White coach separately that I would be on particular lookout for any signs of retaliation by his team, given the hotheadedness of young players, and remind him that my first goal is to ensure a safe match. I’d also note that any sign of orchestrated retaliation (such as a sub targeting Red #8) would go into my match report with a note that the coach appeared to be responsible.
At that point it’s up to the coach. If he wants to jeopardize his season with a multi-match suspension for himself and one of his players while going down to 10 or 9 players, he can do that. But punishing Red #8 for something that isn’t his fault seems misguided, albeit well-intentioned.
RK
What are you referring to? Refs in football throw flags for well-defined actions. How does that remove humanity from the sport?
OzarkHillbilly
@RK:
Define a legal tackle in one sentence.
dedc79
That’s not a particularly helpful description of the play, but aren’t the key questions with soccer fouls: (1) who got to the ball first? and (2) what was the point of contact – the ball or the other player’s body?
If you get to the ball first and play the ball, it’s a clean tackle. If you come in late and make contact with the other player’s body rather than the ball, it’s a foul and often a card.
DLew On Roids
@RK:
That in the culture around the NFL, there is a belief that there is an objectively correct call for every play. See the kerfuffle over Dez Bryant’s catch/non-catch vs Green Bay. In soccer, the referee is expected to manage the match, using his or her judgment to keep the players safe and play fair.
DLew On Roids
@dedc79:
In most leagues, a play that can’t be executed without wiping out the opponent, even if you get there first and play the ball, will rightly get you a card for recklessness.
RK
There’s not such thing as a legal tackle as far as I know. There are rules about what you can’t do to take down a player such as horse-collaring or hits to the head however. But I don’t see how enforcing the rules takes the humanity out of football or any other sport for that matter.
OzarkHillbilly
@RK:
You don’t know much about football, do you?
In an effort to protect the players, a most laudable goal I must say, what is a legal tackle now depends upon who the player being tackled is, what they are doing, what they are about to do, what they might do, and what the intent of the tackler might, or might not, be. In short, in American football a legal tackle seems to be whatever the ref decides it is at that particular instance. A play later it is a different definition.
Or to be more precise, a different definition applies. The rules of tackling alone have become so complex, the game has become unwatchable.
cmorenc
@Richard Mayhew:
I’m having a hard time visualizing the scenario and foul from the description given – which so far as it goes, indicates no justifiable basis to give red #8 a card of either color, if it was indeed a “hard but legal” challenge – which would have meant that: a) red got to the ball first; AND b) red’s momentum on the challenge doesn’t inevitably cause his leg to follow through into white, but rather the white player’s momentum to cause white to continue across red’s leg/body. On what basis do you call a foul on red? (without which there is no “reckless” foul to pin a card upon). A slide tackle isn’t an unfair challenge or “dangerous play” either one , if the tackler gets to ball first and doesn’t spear his opponent with outstretched leg, but rather the opponent simply trips across the leg which-got-there-first across his path.
RK
I can’t say I know how the rules of soccer are written but in most sports there are objectively correct calls for every play because there are rules. Subjectivity can, and does, come into play because humans are making the judgements which is why instant replay has been instituted in many leagues. As to the humanity that you seem to like in soccer, hasn’t that made the sport a flopping debacle?
rikyrah
I love all your posts…they inform, no matter what.
OzarkHillbilly
Anti-Muslim Activists Still Think Ahmed Mohamed May Have Built ‘Half A Bomb’ I wonder if any of these idiots wake up to a “bomb trigger”, talk into a “bomb trigger” multiple times a day, use a “bomb trigger” to start their cars, wear a “bomb trigger” on their wrists…..
RK
@OzarkHillbilly: I think you’re confused. A tackle is where you bring a player to the ground but there’s no definition as to how that’s legally done. Rather, and as I already stated, there are certain prohibitions in doing so. Illegal tackling actions that I’m aware of involve horse-collaring (which is legal in certain circumstances I believe) and certain hits to the head that was instituted due to concussion concerns and which you see very little of now because defensive players have adapted.
OzarkHillbilly
@RK: I repeat, you don’t know much about football, do you?
Edward G. Talbot
It’s a tough choice and I wouldn’t be second-guessing the ref. I’m not very familiar with men’s college soccer, but I’ve rarely seen a card given for this type of thing in the big pro leagues around the world. It’s kind of disappointing to think that the men’s college game is wired just this way, where somehow the giving of a yellow card could stave off massive retaliation for what was pretty much a fair play.
But I’m not naive. I love soccer, but I shake my head at how worked up – both for show and for real – players get about things that are just part of the game.
Amir Khalid
The Guardian‘s football page runs a weekly strip titled “You are The Ref”: each strip features three football refereeing situations, some of them pretty far-out, and readers are invited to say in the comments what they would do as the ref.
In the situation discussed here, I don’t see a foul, or how a yellow card to Red #8 is justified. He trapped the ball and made no contact with his opponent. From the description, it seems to me that White #’2’s injury was entirely self-inflicted. That aside, I agree with the ref warning the White coach not to let his players retaliate. I also think that if I were the Red coach, I’d sub #8 out if I saw signs of retaliation against him.
RK
The football to which you refer? No, nothing at all.
NorthLeft12
Richard, I love these posts. I used to coach Premier League U17 and U18 girl/women teams and was always frustrated with the lack of yellow cards or referee to player warnings regarding fouls/rough play. To me referees have a key role to play in teaching the rules of the game to the players. As a coach, I could say all I want about rough play and dangerous tackles, but if the referee did not enforce the rules and issue cards or warnings, it was all for naught.
I had it out with one ref in Woodstock, Ontario when two of my players were injured during the game on horrible tackles, which were called fouls. My team finished the game with ten players. I told him that I expected him to do all he could to ensure a safe game for these young women, and that he had failed miserably in this game. When I asked him why he did not issue red or yellow cards or even warn the players about the severity of the foul, he told me that he did not see an intent to injure from the Woodstock players, and that they were not all that experienced as players [!!!} and to card them would not be productive as they would not understand what they were doing wrong.
Needless to say this answer stupefied me and resulted in our Manager getting red carded for unsportsmanlike conduct when he instructed [very loudly in front of the ref] that our players not shake the refs hand after the game as is our, and the league’s custom.
I know a few other refs from my soccer playing in senior leagues and they indicated that no refs like to give cards out, partly because of all the hassle in dealing with the league administration afterwards and also the impact on invites to referee. That was my last year of coaching. I could not put up with the BS any longer.
NorthLeft12
@cmorenc: I think Richard explained that the card was given to keep the game under control and reduce the chance of retaliation.
Technically you may find this objectionable, but in the bigger scheme it may have been an important action to keep players [particularly the Red player who injured the White player] safe for the remainder of the game.
I wish I had such intelligent refs when I was coaching.
Richard Mayhew
@cmorenc: By the book, the restart should have been either a dropball or a throw-in (not sure about the detail on that).
You’re a former 6 and you’ve been around enough to know that every referee worth his/her salt has a few tricks that aren’t in the book and require taking some extreme liberties with Law 5 to further the goals of safe/fair. This is one of those scenarios that I’ve had stewing in my head since 11:30 yesterday morning when I heard it during a warm-up jog.
I’ve been to clinics where Geiger, Morgante, Fletcher, Tamborino, Domka and Ross have all explicitly stated that the game at times calls for us to abandon the letter to enforce the spirit. Those statements are during general sessions and not at the bar (the interesting cases are discussed at the bar).
Let’s talk if bending the book makes sense here given history, temperature, and types of players on the field.
Richard Mayhew
@Edward G. Talbot: Pro game is a different ball game entirely.
A NCAA D-1 Yellow card can often be either a simple foul or trifling/inconsequential contact in the EPL.
I’ve seen plays in the EPL where I thinking straight red, and the ref comes out with a direct free kick. The same plays in the World Cup also occur ( look at the upper body hand fighting going deep into the corner where there is significant contact at and above the shoulders — WC that is just professionals looking for advantage as long as it is not hard on soft contact or has a big wind-up —- college, I better call something )
SRW1
Was Red #8 by any chance a relative of Diego Costa?
Just One More Canuck
@NorthLeft12: that’s why we appreciate the referee I referred to above – he teaches the girls what a foul is. Even at the U10 level there is a lot of pushing and grabbing, but when a good referee tells them why, they get it and take it to heart – if 10 year olds can grasp that, then surely adult or near adult women can understand it
(At least for the most part – there is one team in our league (I’m in Markham/York Region) whose coaches and parents encourage grabbing, elbowing and diving) – those games get a little more heated)
Rafer Janders
Honestly, it sounds as if the situation wouldn’t have been so bad if the referee hadn’t called in the trainer to break White #2’s leg….
Lee
@Just One More Canuck:
We had a referee like that when my daughter’s were playing. Yes it was awesome to have him work a game. We had a parent complain a bit too enthusiastically about a call once. He just looked over at her with that ‘Are you really doing that?’ look. Everyone (including her) had a good laugh.
@RM Glad you clarified Red was on the ground, I was pretty sure they were.
Edward G. Talbot
@Richard Mayhew: Yes, that makes sense. The one time you do see the hand fighting called regularly in the pros seems to be against the offensive players on corner kicks despite the fact that defense is equally guilty most of the time.
The pros do seem to be cracking down some on dangerous tackling, however. I actually think the EPL has that balance just about right, though some of the old pros grumble about yellow cards when someone comes in studs up 18 inches off the ground and gets a card even though they got the ball first and didn’t actually cause injury.
Richard Mayhew
@Rafer Janders: We all know trainers are sadists either by nature or education.
NorthLeft12
@Just One More Canuck: My older daughter played Premier and traveled to the Toronto area for tournaments, and the roughest/physical and most cynical teams were from that area. They were also very talented too, so my daughter’s team was outmatched at every level.
I remember talking to one parent of the other team [Dixie] during the game [as we were getting smoked] and I mentioned that I did not understand why they had to play as “physical” as they did, when they could win just on their talent and organization. He commented that this is the way they always play and that they have to play this way to be competitive in that area. Our teams, were just not coached that well [I include myself in that] or way, to stand up to that kind of beating.
Phaedrus
having played sweeper all my life (and still, in my 50’s) I have to say I completely disagree. I understand the reasoning, but it seems to be twisting the “spirit” of the game, where legal becomes illegal because the other team has proven volatile. It would seem that if a referee has a reasonable expectation that the other team is going to behave irresponsibly, he should call the game. Penalizing good play because of a threat is letting the terrorists win :)
Richard Mayhew
@NorthLeft12: My observation has been the ethnic leagues in New York City, and the Chicago teams are consistently the physically toughest teams I’ve see on the youth/amateur level. The occassional German and English U-17 A-level pro-developmental teams that do a US tour are just HARD where there is no such thing as a soft challenge. And I say this after watching plenty of MLS developmental academy games where the goal is the same — get those kids ready to play professionally.
Richard Mayhew
@Edward G. Talbot: I understand that call as studs up keeps the opponent from even having a vague chance of safely challenging for the ball. It is a deterring effect of causing career ending injury that creates a “clean” play… might be safe (ish) but definately not fair.
Just One More Canuck
@NorthLeft12: Our coaches try to stress how to engage in the physical play so that they are not pushed off the ball (it’s one of the biggest strides in my daughter’s play that I’ve seen this year). A lot of our players are on the smaller side (it amazes me how big a 10 year old girl can be), so initiating physical play wouldn’t be that effective for the, but sticking with the play and using skill to win the ball is one of the things I really like about how our team is coached,
Edward G. Talbot
@Richard Mayhew I completely agree about the studs up calls! Was more intended just to illustrate a case where I think the balance of calls is done pretty well but some argue otherwise.
And of course I guess I’ve gone afield from your original post which was on the referee making a judgment based on the spirit of keeping the game safe as opposed to the letter of the rulebook. As I said, it’s not the kind of play where I’d be second-guessing the ref. If I were a ref myself. . .well, I’ve officiated other sports and I know that until you actually do it you don’t have a good sense of the kind of decisions you would make. So I have no idea what I would do in this case in a soccer game.
@JustOneMoreCanuck – I think there’s a whole range of what constitutes “initiating physical play”. At the 10-11 girls age (my daughter is U12), I actually find some of the smaller girls are quite adept at arriving at the ball a split second before a larger player and using their bodies to cause the other player to bounce off. Or making a tackle on defense where they wind up with inevitable contact. That sounds a lot like what you are talking about with your daughter’s coaches teaches them how to engage in physical play smartly. Some of the more timid teams in our league consider that initiating physical play, while it’s not nearly to the level of what the most physical team does.
I do agree that the kind of pushing with hands arms and elbows that starts around this age (maybe a year or two earlier with boys) and gradually increases until the all-out war you see in the pros is not something I think we need to teach. Even though inevitably kids do get away with plenty of it when there is only a single ref, especially right in the box. We focus on making sure that protecting or winning the ball starts with the lower body, then adds the shoulders for additional help and then only hand-checking as a final small piece.
Patrick
This all seems counter-intuitive. It would seem to me that White would have MORE reason to retaliate as the Ref deemed the challenge reckless or dangerous (i.e. Yellow Card). If the Ref rules it a fair challenge (no card) then why retaliate for a clean play?
However, seeing as the call was right by the bench and the ref thought White would retaliate, then possibly the call was bad. Maybe Red #8 did make a rash challenge and the Ref missed it. I doubt he would tell you he missed it, and in his own mind sees it the way his mind wants to see it. The yellow card then mollifies White, as the Ref made the right call even though the Ref was making the wrong call in his own mind.
Just One More Canuck
@Edward G. Talbot: A lot of what I see them doing is making sure that they are prepared for the contact that is inevitably coming. I think (although you are clearly more knowledgeable than me about this, so correct me if I’m wrong) that we are on the same page.
Edward G. Talbot
@Just One More Canuck: I am not that knowledgeable, just cursed with analytical curiosity for anything I get involved with more than tangentially. I would say that when two players go for a ball and have contact, it’s an open question who initiated it. And we encourage our players not to back down at all when it comes to going for the ball (backing down is the single biggest problem I see with the girls this age in our level of regional travel program). But I do think we are on the same page as far as going out of their way to initiate unnecessary (but legal) contact. You are right that for some teams, that is their game plan.
JG
@DLew On Roids:
Winner
NorthLeft12
@Just One More Canuck: There is an astonishing [to me at least] change in the physicality of play in girls from U13 [when I first started coaching/watching] to U17. Perhaps part of my education [and the girls as well] was travelling and having games with higher achieving teams. My daughters played, and I coached, in the Sarnia area. When we got into the Ontario Cup, we had our eyes opened to how the top teams played. Though we were Premier, we ran into teams that regularly travelled all over the province to play league games.
They were bigger, faster, more physical, more organized, and far more soccer intelligent than our teams. We took our lumps and learned, but we could never match up with some of those teams.
Mike Furlan
That this scenario even played out tells me that something is seriously broken in the culture of the game of soccer.
It reminds me of the “girls” part of this:
https://youtu.be/RTrCBcrFMCI
mclaren
More proof that we need to ban children’s sports and give them something productive to do, like reading books.
brantl
@DLew On Roids: That was my point, exactly.