Columbus Soccer Ref

I’m curious to hear from people about their strangest, craziest, scariest, or most bizzare red card.

For me, on two occasions I’ve had a player put his hands on me.
On one of them I was doing a U16 boys match I whistled a hard foul, and went to the spot to diffuse tension between the two players. The fouled player got up and promptly pushed me, apparently thinking I was an opponent. It took me a second to realize what had happned and reach for the red card. Not a whole lot arguement from the player once he realized what happened. No arguement from the bench.
The second time, I was doing a U17 boys match - for my upgrade assessment to Grade 7 no less. Attacking team has a DFK about 25 yards from goal. I set the wall and whistled for the kick. Before the kick takes place, the defending players in the wall are pushing an attacking player in the wall. The kick goes wide of goal for a goal kick. As the defending team is retrieving the ball for the goal kick, I go to have a word with the members of the wall to let them know the attacking player has a right to be there and not to push off prior to the kick. One of the defenders dissented a bit, saying the attacking player pushed him - then demonstrated with an outright push on me. It took me a minute to realize how big a case of the stupids this kid had.

But the strangest send off I’ve had was at a tournament I did last fall. I did a U17 middle and it was early in the second half. By then, players on both sides had a pretty good idea that I wasn’t putting up with a whole lot of dissent. Attacking player is dribbling near the goal line well to the right side of goal, almost where the penalty area meets the goal line. Attacking player loses the ball to the center back. In trying to get the ball back, he fouled the central defender. It was something of a hard foul, but I didn’t feel it was reckless, so I used a hard whistle for the foul. So we have a DFK coming back out. As the ball was being retrieved for the kick, the central defender is adamant that the attacking player deserved to be cautioned. Attempts to end the debate failed, so the central defender was cautioned for dissent and shown the yellow card. The restart is still a free kick in his team’s favor. But this knucklehead just couldn’t control the hole under his nose and stepped up his dissent. Again, I tried to end the debate to no success. So he was shown another yellow card, again for dissent, and then was shown the red card for his second caution. Ball still hasn’t even been put into play yet. He knew even before his first yellow card that I wasn’t tolerating much dissent. . .then didn’t get the message with the first caution. At the end of it all, the restart was still a free kick in favor of the sent-off player’s team. It was a college showcase tournament and looking back, I’m sort of torn. On the one hand, after his first caution I certainly could have run over to his coach and “strongly suggest” he sit the player for the remainder of the match. But on the other hand, if college coaches were there to see players they may want to know when a player is unable to adapt his play to a different referee and to know if a player is prone to lose his mind.

Looking forward to hearing about the craziness encountered by everyone else out there.