Columbus Soccer Ref

Well, this past weekend were my first matches of the season.  For mid-March in Columbus, the weather was unbelievable.  Sunny with highs in the upper 50s.

In my first match, I was in the middle for a U19B match.  I’d been fighting a chest cold for a few days and was concerned about how it would affect me in the match.  All in all, it was better than I’d expected.  In the match we had White v. Red.  The first half went reasonably well, with both teams being rusty and two cautions issued in the half - one for each team.  Score at halftime was 1-1.  In the first half, there was some chirping from Red (visitors) about the ball - which of course, was supplied by White.  I’d inspected the ball before the match and it was fine.  It was a Nike full-leather ball, so the overall weight of the ball may have been a bit lighter than many of balls they’d been used to playing with.  But throughout the first half, I never saw any indication of the ball being a problem for anyone.  Indeed, I never saw any problem with players receiving the ball, passing the ball, or shooting the ball.  And in fact, it was Red that had the first goal of the match.  At hafftime, I checked the ball again with a guage and it was a little bit low.  So I added some air to it.  And we begin the second half. . .At 48 minutes, White goes down the field and scores.  As Red is bringing the ball back, three or four players for Red were continuing to go on about the ball.  I told the Red captian that there was nothing wrong with the ball and we were going to stay with it.  While this was happening, one of the Red forwards was saying that they were just going to kick the ball out of bounds.  So I blow the whistle for the kick off. . .Red player touches it forward to a teammate, who promptly blasts it out of bounds (like he said he would).   So I then caution this player for dissent.  He was dissenting, by action, my decision on the suitability of the match ball.  So of course from then on, anytime someone kicked the ball out of bounds there was chirping for a yellow card.  But play did go on.  The second half went OK, without serious incident, and the match ended 3-1 in favor of White.

As I mentioned in the title, it was probably the strangest caution I’d ever issued.  Was I being overly stubborn about the ball?  Possibly.   But as I said, if I’d seen anyone have any problem - at all - using that ball (controlling, receiving, passing, shooting) then I would have had no problem swapping it.  But in watching the play of the match, that simply wasn’t the case.  As a result, Red was simply complaining for the sake of complaining - or they were attempting some petty gamesmanship regarding their opponent’s choice of match ball.

For the second match, I was the AR on a U17B.  I felt the CR handled it well and I think for the most part, calls a match pretty similarly to myself.  But as in my match, the players were a bit rusty and there wasn’t a great deal of agressive/physical play.  And I think we all felt fortunate for that.

In the third match, I was again an AR - this time for a U16B.  The CR for this match was the other member of our crew.  I found this match very difficult on a few levels.  To be sure, this was the third match which followed two 90-minute matches.  So fatigue was a factor.  But as an AR, I felt the way CR handled the match made it very difficult for the ARs to provide assistance.   To begin with, the CR let play get REALLY physical - almost to the point of letting the players mug each other.  And the CR definitely allowed the players to use their hands a lot - hand checks, subtle pushes, etc.  As an AR, I try to get a feel for what the CR is and is not calling and tailor my assistance based on that.  But when the CR is letting so much go, it makes it very hard for the AR to know when to step in.  Another factor that made things difficult, and intertwined with the first point, was the CR’s positioning.  In short, the CR was almost always too far away from play.  As a result, the CR was poorly positioned to see all of the hand checks/pushes and to get a good view of play.  And the third thing that made things tougher than necessary, was that the CR would try to explain every call rather than simply stating what the call was and then moving on.  I don’t know how many times the CR would whistle a foul, and then be explaining the call rather than working to get into position for the free kick - where she had a view of the landing zone.  And as a result, wasn’t in much of a position to see any of the jostling that naturally happens during set pieces at the U16+ level.

If it sounds like I’m throwing this CR under the bus, that’s not my intent.  But I do think there important lessons here.  All of these things go into overall match control.  If you let the players generally mug each other, aren’t in position to see things happen (especially in the landing zones on set pieces), and are worried about trying to make everyone happy, then players are bound to think they can be as physical as they want - and in turn take matters into their own hands.  And each successive incident can raise the overall level of “heat” in the match.  When that happens, you’re in real danger of losing control of the match.  And once the genie is out of the bottle good luck getting him back in.