Dave Mac
Member
Oh dear.
had my first competitive adults game on Saturday. A league cup tie (I was a bit nervy taking a cup game on as my first game anyways!) and heavens above ended up being a bit of a nightmare.
The Good
Well looking back I should have cracked down harsher, earlier. I let a a bit of jockeying for headers go which quickly escalated to other areas of the pitch and even then hitting the whistling for some it made me look a little inconsistent having let worse go in the opening 15 or so. But I know looking back I should have cracked down more.
I was also happy with my decisions (I'll get to them in a mo!) I know I could walk away feeling I'd made the right choices and happy with the cards I dished out.
Despite the losing team having literally nothing good to say about me the captain from the winning team (who was the best sportsman on the pitch by far) came up to me after the game and thought I'd handled a tastey game pretty well and I said I didnt think I had the best one and he said I thought I'd done well as I actually spoke to the players and least gave them an explanation of why something was given or not. He said too often a ref will just shake his head and thats it, least I gave a quick shout as to why I didnt give something. He felt that stopped alot more questions being asked.
The Bad
The away team which ended up winning turned up and I'd say their average age was about 30, compared to the real young home team, which immediately had me worried. You know you can just tell a bunch of older wiser players who've got plenty of tricks up their sleeve along with some real youngsters who looked like they'd get wound up easily. It did end up like that with the away team getting really under their skin making for a fairly tense encounter, but not my fault, just something I had to manage.
First big call was a hand ball by the keeper, came to the edge of his area and grabbed the ball, I wasnt too close, but in my mind wasnt outside the box so I was happy. Then the footballing gods were smiling on me as the keeper lumped it down field, defender missed it, striker is through on goal, keeper charges out and as the forward takes a shot the keeper is about a yard outside the box and hits his hand. Bugger, got to blow for that one as was much closer and could see it. Cue a god awful amount of moaning as could be expected. AS I'd literally just denied a fairly similar shout 10 seconds earlier. I booked the keeper as in my mind if the striker was having a shot it would have needed a decent amount of swing to have gone on target, more likely I think he was trying to knock it round the keeper to slot it home. So I was happy with the card. But then at half time I had the line-o from the attacking team tell me I'd bottled the decision, then he made the great claim that a new law has just come in that if a goal keeper handles the ball outside the box its a red card.
Still first half was alright, plenty of mouth going on which I tried to calm down, but both teams were really having a go at each other.
Second half 15 mins in and the winger is getting down the side, defender is pulling him, I blow for the free kick and the winger then swings round and smacks the defender with his elbow. I immediately think bugger, there really wasnt any other choice than to bring out the red. I understand theres trying to shake a player off, but this was clearly a deliberate swing of the arm to catch him with the elbow. Needless to say the player walking wasnt happy and neither were any of his team mates. From that point onwards the team down to 10 are totally losing their discipline, giving away loads of silly fouls, and then had a couple more bookings for dissent even when I was giving them a free kick.
10 men went on to lose 3-1 from being 1-0 up. I realised how big an impact giving a red card has and maybe I should have gone for a yellow, although I'm fairly sure he threw the elbow on purpose.
Final problem was the game was in a school so girls and boys changing rooms, all my stuff was with the home team that had lost so getting my stuff I basically had to endure them just going on about what a poor ref they'd had, how they'd been robbed etc. I normally just leave my bag in the car and shoot off straight away so wish I'd done that now!
I think I've learnt a good few lessons from it and will give another open age game a go again soon, but certainly was a baptism of fire shall we say!
had my first competitive adults game on Saturday. A league cup tie (I was a bit nervy taking a cup game on as my first game anyways!) and heavens above ended up being a bit of a nightmare.
The Good
Well looking back I should have cracked down harsher, earlier. I let a a bit of jockeying for headers go which quickly escalated to other areas of the pitch and even then hitting the whistling for some it made me look a little inconsistent having let worse go in the opening 15 or so. But I know looking back I should have cracked down more.
I was also happy with my decisions (I'll get to them in a mo!) I know I could walk away feeling I'd made the right choices and happy with the cards I dished out.
Despite the losing team having literally nothing good to say about me the captain from the winning team (who was the best sportsman on the pitch by far) came up to me after the game and thought I'd handled a tastey game pretty well and I said I didnt think I had the best one and he said I thought I'd done well as I actually spoke to the players and least gave them an explanation of why something was given or not. He said too often a ref will just shake his head and thats it, least I gave a quick shout as to why I didnt give something. He felt that stopped alot more questions being asked.
The Bad
The away team which ended up winning turned up and I'd say their average age was about 30, compared to the real young home team, which immediately had me worried. You know you can just tell a bunch of older wiser players who've got plenty of tricks up their sleeve along with some real youngsters who looked like they'd get wound up easily. It did end up like that with the away team getting really under their skin making for a fairly tense encounter, but not my fault, just something I had to manage.
First big call was a hand ball by the keeper, came to the edge of his area and grabbed the ball, I wasnt too close, but in my mind wasnt outside the box so I was happy. Then the footballing gods were smiling on me as the keeper lumped it down field, defender missed it, striker is through on goal, keeper charges out and as the forward takes a shot the keeper is about a yard outside the box and hits his hand. Bugger, got to blow for that one as was much closer and could see it. Cue a god awful amount of moaning as could be expected. AS I'd literally just denied a fairly similar shout 10 seconds earlier. I booked the keeper as in my mind if the striker was having a shot it would have needed a decent amount of swing to have gone on target, more likely I think he was trying to knock it round the keeper to slot it home. So I was happy with the card. But then at half time I had the line-o from the attacking team tell me I'd bottled the decision, then he made the great claim that a new law has just come in that if a goal keeper handles the ball outside the box its a red card.
Still first half was alright, plenty of mouth going on which I tried to calm down, but both teams were really having a go at each other.
Second half 15 mins in and the winger is getting down the side, defender is pulling him, I blow for the free kick and the winger then swings round and smacks the defender with his elbow. I immediately think bugger, there really wasnt any other choice than to bring out the red. I understand theres trying to shake a player off, but this was clearly a deliberate swing of the arm to catch him with the elbow. Needless to say the player walking wasnt happy and neither were any of his team mates. From that point onwards the team down to 10 are totally losing their discipline, giving away loads of silly fouls, and then had a couple more bookings for dissent even when I was giving them a free kick.
10 men went on to lose 3-1 from being 1-0 up. I realised how big an impact giving a red card has and maybe I should have gone for a yellow, although I'm fairly sure he threw the elbow on purpose.
Final problem was the game was in a school so girls and boys changing rooms, all my stuff was with the home team that had lost so getting my stuff I basically had to endure them just going on about what a poor ref they'd had, how they'd been robbed etc. I normally just leave my bag in the car and shoot off straight away so wish I'd done that now!
I think I've learnt a good few lessons from it and will give another open age game a go again soon, but certainly was a baptism of fire shall we say!
