A&H

DOGSO mess up

Have you ever not given red while you know it should have been red?

  • Yes

    Votes: 19 70.4%
  • No

    Votes: 8 29.6%

  • Total voters
    27

Jorik0907

Well-Known Member
Well, here it goes. My first post here and I've already become last week's ref. My first couple of games went by smoothly and my assessor keeps on providing me with very useful information regarding my postioning and communication with the players. Improvement does show and that's what I'm glad about. Until now, I've always been congratulated by both managers and the same happened on Saturday although I made a massive mistake in Law.
Due to the Dutch (imo) stupid sin bin for a yellow card, a grassroots Ladies' game ended with all 22 on the pitch. Last minute DOGSO by the keeper outside the box, but since the game was incredibly competitive and fair, and the tackle wasn't malicous in the slightest, I decided to go with yellow. Few protests, but nothing serious. Free kick was missed, away team wasted time until the end of stoppage time and that was that.

Yet if the girl somehow breaks someone's leg next week, I'll be the one sure that she shouldn't even be playing.
Well, rant over. Bring on Saturday!
 
The Referee Store
Don't beat yourself up, any challenge, thats ANY challenge can be a leg breaker, even a perfectly fair one. Just learn from it, put it behind you and move on! Get the big decisions right on the majority of occasions and you won't go far wrong! We all look back at games and wonder what if, thats good to analyse your performance. Next time there may be an assessor in the stand analysing you!!
 
I mean...yeah, I can think of two off the top of my head with no effort.

One where I simply wasn't switched on at the very start of the game, ball is played back from KO and opposition striker absolutely launches himself in for a really wild tackle. But I wasn't totally focused on it (I was a bit distracted because one of my watches hadn't started properly and it simply hadn't occurred to me that someone might do that as their first action of the match) and so I only gave a FK and a bollocking. Replayed it in my head a few minutes later and realised just how bad it had been. I was quick to take the opportunity to get him in the book for dissent later on, but he absolutely shouldn't have been there. And another where I managed to convince myself I'd misheard something that almost certainly should have been OFFINABUS. I "knew" what he'd said, but I didn't feel 100% confident, so I bottled it.

Everyone makes mistakes. As long as you learn from them and don't repeat them, they can still be positive experiences.
 
If you made an unknowing choice in something and got it wrong thats a genuine human error!!
If you had the same situation again and got it wrong again then that worse because it was a knowledgable mistake choice!!

Suck it up, move on!! Concentrate next time!!!
 
@GraemeS I agree with SF here. If you only figured out later that it should have been a red then it was just an error at the time. Had you been focused, saw it, knew its a red but still didn't send off the player because you didn't want to send anyone off in the first 10 seconds of the game, then you are looking at what the OP is talking about.

I had two cases. First one was in one my poor days. Two teams with a lot of history and rivalry. I was having trouble with controlling the game and dissent. A player kicked out at an opponent's leg after I turned down his appeal for a foul. At the time I knew its a clear red but convinced myself if I send him off I will completely lose control of the game. So I went for a yellow instead.

After the game guilt (if any) was a lot easier to deal with in the second case. Last game of the season in a dead rubber between the last and second last teams. One team only had 9 show up. Towards the end of the game with no cards and very little fouls they were down by I think 8 or 9 goals. A defender DOGSO handballs very close to the goal line. Pure reflex reaction. I blow the whistle and the first thing I hear is the striker saying "don't send him off ref". I say "why should I send him off?". I explained I saw the ball crossing the line so I am awarding the goal. Just a Yellow for USB. I knew it had to be a red but bottled it with a little white lie which everyone accepted with a smile.
 
Why are you talking about DOGSO, and then talking about her breaking somebody's leg next week? I fail to see how the two are remotely connected - she hasn't played viciously, so don't question a potential vicious tackle next week
And yeah, I have a number of cases where I should have given red cards. A couple of times it is either OFFINABUS (or not giving a 2nd yellow for dissent) or DOGSO, once a player put his hands on my chest firmly stopping my movement and it didn't click until some time later what had happened.

So yeah.

My non-red card stuffup is bigger than your non-red card stuffup :p

Admittedly, in some of the case I mentioned before I _knew_ it should be a red but just chickened out.
 
We've all got skeletons in our cupboard on this. Sometimes 'doing the right thing' isn't the same thing as 'doing the right thing in Law' unfortunately!!
 
We all have incidents that when we look back on it we'd do something very different. Its all part of the learning process. Important thing is to not beat yourself up, move on and learn from it, so next time it happens (and it will) you do the right thing.
 
yup ... twice this season, once was being asked if I had the other teams shirt underneath my ref top - was like a rabbit in headlights! didn't;t even caution :oops:

other, not so bad ... bit of fisty cuffs from 2 players, they laughed it off seconds after I broke it up, so passed a yellow each and told them to grow up basically.
 
Was half expecting a Padfoot bollocking by now, but yeah. Using common sense is often as difficult to do as applying the law. Either way, one team is going to be upset. In any case, my case is imo a great example why the sin bin should never have been introduced

Using "common sense" is fine in situations where you have "grey areas" where its down to interpretation (i.e. challenge that is a marginal choice between a strong word and a yellow) and you might make a decision based on the context/temperature of the game. Where it becomes a real problem is where Application of Law is "superseded" by a referee applying "common sense"

When a referee does that it does 2 things:

1) Sets bad habits for the referee in question and becomes easier to justify to themselves each and every time they do it
2) Makes my life harder as "next weeks ref" when I do go and apply the law - in fact its likely to cost the team more in the long run as i'm likely to get a whole pile of dissent for my decisions.

We can take into account the skill level, for example for DOGSO at the lowest league at grassroots level, on a crappy pitch, you want to be much closer to the goal for it to be an obvious goal scoring opportunity than further up the pyramid. But ultimately lets remember, its the players that are giving us the decisions to make.

The player that sticks their hand out on the line to stop the ball going in has made a decision (conscious or not) to do so.
In the OP's example - the keeper that has rushed out of her area has made that decision - had she stayed in the box and committed the foul then its likely a yellow and a penalty
The player that throws a punch or starts squaring up to opponents has decided to react
The player that even though they've been booked, continues to dive into tackles has paid no heed to the caution or the consequences of getting it wrong again

However also consider that as a new referee, everyone, your CFA, appointments secretary, league and often teams know that you will make mistakes. Thats why in general you are not going to get the really decisive games until you gain a bit more experience, you'll get games where your mistakes won't actually make a difference. But even at grassroots level, eliminating those mistakes is important if you want to get games further up the league or in higher leagues.
 
We've all got skeletons in our cupboard on this. Sometimes 'doing the right thing' isn't the same thing as 'doing the right thing in Law' unfortunately!!
Agreed. Which makes me wonder who the (so far) 4 people are who don't think they've ever missed a RC!
 
Agreed. Which makes me wonder who the (so far) 4 people are who don't think they've ever missed a RC!
Me. But thats not the question. The question is have you ever not given a red card when you know it should be red.

The truthful answer is I cant think of a time when I have not awarded a red card when i know it should have been.

I may very well have missed a red card offence, not heard something, had a poor view but I have never knowingly awarded an alternative sanction to that which the lotg tells me is a red. As in I have never let anybody off.

I may have let some choice language go but we've had the tolerance argument too many times for that to really be a consideration.
 
Agreed. Which makes me wonder who the (so far) 4 people are who don't think they've ever missed a RC!

I've definitely missed red cards either through poor positioning, being unsighted or any other number of reasons. I also have on 3 occasions "bottled" giving red cards for reasons of match control of match context and in the case of the first time I did it being worried about the reaction.

My "hallejulah" moment came after the 3rd time, when the manager of the offenders team asked me what I'd seen and then asked why I hadn't sent his player off. He proceeded to tell me nicely that as a manager he wants consistency from referees and he needs his players to learn the hard way if necessary. His final statement to me was " just do your job" From then on, in 3 years, I've not bottled one since.
 
Yes, that is largely my experience also. A manager, who has a tendency to be quite impassioned during matches and to get on your back, probably gave me his most complimentary handshake after a match last season in which I cautioned three U14s for AA (the most I have handed out to that team and to that age group in a single match). That set the tone for the match.
For all that they can make your life difficult, most managers are trying to educate their players and want to watch a well-officiated match in which the laws are applied properly. They often express admiration for referees with a hard-line approach (even at the expense of their players) and despair at 'last week's ref' as much as referees do.

As for failing to give warranted red cards, I have definitely been guilty. Probably the worst example was when an U17 player called me the 'c' word (not cheat) just after the final whistle. I had been verging on a breakdown in that match (young referee; not much experience of the competitive level/age group), and being virtually on auto-pilot took my senses away from me at a crucial moment. It felt like a fight/flight moment, and I didn't want to stay any longer on that pitch than necessary.
There was also a very irate manager I should have dismissed for confronting me on the pitch (I didn't have enough confidence in the decision that had led to his anger; sometimes you have to feign assurance).
 
For all that they can make your life difficult, most managers are trying to educate their players and want to watch a well-officiated match in which the laws are applied properly. They often express admiration for referees with a hard-line approach (even at the expense of their players) and despair at 'last week's ref' as much as referees do.
Where do you find these "most managers? Do they need more referees there?☺
I'd be lucky to see 2 or 3 of them in a whole season at grassroots level.
 
There isn't a referee alive who hasn't failed to send off a player when they should have. And if they tell you they fit into that category they are either very new and haven't messed up yet, or are telling porkies. Doesn't mean they failed to send off deliberately, but we've all ballsed up and got it wrong at times.

My most common one is seeing the challenge, knowing I'm sending off, but then losing the offender in the ensuing melee. I'll try to use kidology and read player body language to get the right one, but if that doesn't work I'm stuck and have missed a red card.
 
@GraemeS I agree with SF here. If you only figured out later that it should have been a red then it was just an error at the time. Had you been focused, saw it, knew its a red but still didn't send off the player because you didn't want to send anyone off in the first 10 seconds of the game, then you are looking at what the OP is talking about.

I had two cases. First one was in one my poor days. Two teams with a lot of history and rivalry. I was having trouble with controlling the game and dissent. A player kicked out at an opponent's leg after I turned down his appeal for a foul. At the time I knew its a clear red but convinced myself if I send him off I will completely lose control of the game. So I went for a yellow instead.

After the game guilt (if any) was a lot easier to deal with in the second case. Last game of the season in a dead rubber between the last and second last teams. One team only had 9 show up. Towards the end of the game with no cards and very little fouls they were down by I think 8 or 9 goals. A defender DOGSO handballs very close to the goal line. Pure reflex reaction. I blow the whistle and the first thing I hear is the striker saying "don't send him off ref". I say "why should I send him off?". I explained I saw the ball crossing the line so I am awarding the goal. Just a Yellow for USB. I knew it had to be a red but bottled it with a little white lie which everyone accepted with a smile.
Agreeing with me isn't a bad thing GS, I'm like a knackered watch...... I'm usually right at least twice a day!!
 
Last edited:
Back
Top