A&H

Explaining CARs to non-uk ref

Morten

Morten

Member
I am asking these questions as a Norwegian referee, trying to understand what you deal with in England.

So, there is a lot of talk about CARs on here, which I have understood to mean club assistant referee. Which, if I understand it correctly is basically a person who is supposed to help you, but which will have a clear interest in one of the teams winning?

I remember, when I started refereeing I did give the home and away team flags to signal wether the ball was in our out. That was when I was reffing on worn down pitches with suspect line markings. And even then, I stopped as theses "CAR"'s decisions would almost always be worse than if I just did it myself.

So, when I read that these CARs also signal for offside I am surprised. Does this really work? The experience needed to judge wether someone is interferring is wast, and you trust a unqualified person with a serious conflict of interest to judge this? Of course, you can overrule him, which I read that man of you do. But that again would cause all sorts of new problems, I would think. With players moaning.

I don't quite get the refereeing system in England, with the levels (not sure what level I would be at in England, would really like to find out though), and different divisions (my only understanding of lower leagues in England comes from football manager, where the lowest league is Blue Square north/south). At what level and in what division do you get qualified ARs?

I love this forum, I am just asking as it would be easier for me to understand the context of many of the forum posts. No way am I knocking anyone for their use of CARs.
 
The Referee Store
Hi Morten,

I've refereed in an area that didn't use CARs (so I could be by myself), and one that does - and this is in Australia.

CAR's are helpful for ball in/out and throw-ins - with them there, sometimes I can hang back a bit more rather than having to get too close to the line if there's no particular reason to (especially when some fields have lines I can barely see from 20 yards away....).

You're right that some can be cheats. Honestly, I've never had that experience (only had about 2 full seasons with club AR's though). Of course if I disagree with one's decision I need to decide if I disagree strongly enough to overrule.

Offside - yeah, it's problematic. Though to be honest, the way they'd apply offside is probably close to how players want offside refereed than how we're supposed to be refereeing it, so in that way it could create fewer problems. Usually the hardest part is just knowing to watch the 2nd last defender all the time - if you ball watch then turn your head to see where the attacker is, it's too late. So yeah, that can be a problem. But most of them seem reasonable. You'll realise 10min into the game how much trust you can give them. Some are utterly incompetent.

In my area, EVERY game without a NAR gets a CAR.

Overall I prefer to be by myself though - just can't be bothered with the nuisance of finding a CAR, instructing him what to do, debating during the game whether I need to overrule or not, debating whether to address him talking to the players, etc etc. But in a lot of ways they can be quite helpful.

The reality is, if I'm by myself I can't judge offside accurately either - so which is the lesser of 2 evils?
 
I refer you to my answer in a previous thread:
CARs are:
- OK if you restrict them to ball in/out
- Very useful for helping with offside
- Completely useless and should be discouraged whenever possible
- Cheating *******s
- Honest as the day is long
- Completely ignorant
- Surprisingly competent
- Smoking, texting layabouts
- Enthusiastic and impartial
- Casual flag abusers
- Refchat contributors

I think all of these are true.

I have had some really excellent CARs - particularly at youth level; they have been on courses organised by the CFA and do the line every week for years. They take the job seriously and if they show bias, it is usually against their own team. They are better at judging offside than many NARs and are a huge asset.

I have had a lot of CARs who will put the flag up whenever any player is in an offside position. These I tend to overrule.

I have also had, particularly in Open Age where a sub does the line, completely uninterested CARs who can barely give me in/out let alone offside.

I have never had a CAR who I thought was deliberately and consistently cheating.

The state of most pitches that I ref on is such that it is difficult to see lines when you are in the AR position, let alone in the middle of the pitch so in/out is invaluable and for the most part I appreciate the help with offsides. You will find that the view on CARs tends to vary according to what the local practice is. Refs who are on leagues where it is accepted that CARs do offside tend to think they are generally a good thing if you brief them properly and use them carefully; refs who don't usually use CARs for offside can't believe that such a heresy is allowed to exist.

Interestingly, I think there was one ref who posted a while back who had moved county and had changed from not using CARs for offside to using them and said that he much preferred the CAR doing offside.
 
I agree with @McTavish - very rarely do I come across a CAR who goes out to cheat ... some are excellent ... some are doing it for the first time ...

This makes the pre-match Team and CAR chat even more important

On a Saturday I'm usually lucky enough to have CARs who aren't subs, who've played more games that I've had hot dinners, and know what they are doing

On a Sunday I see the full spectrum from high-level refs with a son playing to people who literally have no idea where to stand

I might go one further than most referees on here - if I'm confident with my both my CARs - I will ask them to give me free-kicks, within their credible zone that I may have missed (as requested of them in the presence of the captains at the coin toss) ... they often have a 180 degree different view of things to me - I'll use this to my advantage !
 
Alex71 said:
I agree with @McTavish - very rarely do I come across a CAR who goes out to cheat ... some are excellent ... some are doing it for the first time ...
Click to expand...

I am not suggesting they'd cheat, but when they want one team to win, it is difficult not to skew your view to benefit the one part. We get this as well don't we, when we watch our team play. It is easy to spot all the decisions that should go our way, not so easy the other way.
 
I have always been very wary about letting CAR's indicate fouls. It is not something that I would recommend.
 
I'd think the players would hate it - I've had a couple of occasions when a CAR has flagged as I was blowing for a foul anyway (or they got in first), and players went ballistic - no matter how blatant the foul was.
 
I am generally a great supporter of CARs but I make it very explicit to them that I do not want them to do ANY foul play - not even foot up at throw-ins.

CARs are not generally able to work with you in the way that an NAR would and leave decisions to you wherever possible - they will see what they consider a foul and flag madly for it even though you are five metres away, have a clear view and have decided "no foul"; this is particularly true of handball. You also get the phenomenon of two CARs with wildly different ideas of what constitutes foul play so you have the situation where one is flagging whenever two players get anywhere near each other and the other believes that any tackle that doesn't result in a trip to hospital is all part of "a man's game."

It is true that there could be similar arguments for not letting CARs do offside but I find that the pros generally outweigh the cons with offside decisions particularly as most offsides are a matter of fact rather than opinion and that waving down an offside flag is less damaging to match control than waving down a flag for a foul.
 
Last edited:
I agree - CARs are generally not going to add to the game re fouls ... but ... where I have faith in them - quite often as (ex-)refs themselves - I will continue to ask them to give me credible fouls that I've missed ...

Please don't imagine a CAR flagging every 30 secs for a foul in their team's favour - far from it - in my last game the CARs flagged for 1 foul in the game that I missed (a blind-side shove that everyone else saw) - here, the CAR giving the foul has aided my match control
 
I stand to be corrected but generally (apart from cup finals etc) NARs are appointed to all Supply League games and upwards. Supply League starts Level 10 on the Football League Pyramid so in my region Sussex County Division One (Level 9) and Division 2 (Level 10) have NARs but Division 3 (Level 11) don't.

Looking at that Wiki page I realise that I have refereed on the only level 24 league in the country - Mid-Sussex Div 11 :D
 
McTavish said:
I stand to be corrected but generally (apart from cup finals etc) NARs are appointed to all Supply League games and upwards. Supply League starts Level 10 on the Football League Pyramid so in my region Sussex County Division One (Level 9) and Division 2 (Level 10) have NARs but Division 3 (Level 11) don't.

Looking at that Wiki page I realise that I have refereed on the only level 24 league in the country - Mid-Sussex Div 11 :D
Click to expand...

WOW! That wikipedia page explained SO much for an outsider! In Norway we have 9 levels in the league system and 6 referee levels (in Oslo at least) For the final question, how do the referee level map to the leagues?
 
Again, stand to be corrected (as it does vary from county to county) but Level 6 refs generally do middles on high end 'park' football or lower division County Leagues, Level 5 do middles on County Leagues, Level 4 do middles on Supply League and Level 3 on Contributory Leagues. Referees normally assist on matches one level higher than they do middles. Hope that helps :)
 
I am an appointed AR on Ryman Youth U18s and U21s

Also AR on Ladies Premier League 2 (Level 3 I believe of Ladies league system)

My county also appoints ARs for Brentford U16 and U18 games.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top