The Refereeing Thread

[Hot Pepsi]

"At the end of the game (girls' U15), the away team coach tells me he would have loved a penalty so that his goalkeeper could have got on the score sheet"

It's a shame you didn't give it, as you could have let the keeper take it and then booked her for unsporting conduct (or whatever it's called these days).

(It probably isn't a bookable offence, or any sort of offence at all, but I hate it when goalkeepers are allowed to take penalties just because their team are hammering the opposition. A team I played in was once 5:0 up when we got a penalty near the end and some players were clamouring for our goalie to take it. The manager was having none of it, though. ("Der und Elfmeter? Nö! Der kann den Ball eh keine elf Meter weit schießen! Guckt euch seine beschissenen Abschläge an! Die verhungern so oft, da willst du eine Käsestulle hinterherschmeißen!").)

I didn’t know that was the word for a PK.

And something about discounts and a cheesecake.

[treibeis]

Rough translation:
"There's no way he's taking a penalty! He can't even kick a ball eleven metres! Look at his fucking kicks out of his own box! They're so feeble that you feel like chucking them a cheese sandwich so that they don't starve to death!"

[Duncan Gardner]

After finishing the book Hoechst will never seem the same

[Jobi1]

Query for our refereeing fraternity after something seen on MotD tonight: in the Forest – Manchester United game, there was a backpass to the Forest keeper who sliced his clearance straight up in the air and then managed to catch it when it came back down. Given no other player touched the ball between the keeper kicking and then catching it, should that not still have been an indirect free kick for handling a backpass?

[elguapo4]

I'm not a referee ,but I'd say no because he kicked the backpass first

[scratchmonkey]

Not a referee, idly reading through the FA's Laws of the Game, it specifies an indirect free kick for "deliberately playing the ball to a goalkeeper" when picked up, so I'm guessing that this passed muster in that it was clearly the keeper accidentally playing the ball to himself.

ETA: Kicking wouldn't work in that you could in theory just do a single keepy-uppy and then handle the ball safely, which I think would be called as deliberate.

[Bermuda Iron]

If the keeper has clearly kicked or attempted to kick the ball after a deliberate pass back by a teammate, and he then handles it, no offence.

Extract from Law 12 (third bullet):

An indirect free kick is awarded if a goalkeeper, inside their penalty area, commits any of the following offences:
• controls the ball with the hand/arm for more than six seconds before releasing it
• touches the ball with the hand/arm after releasing it and before it has touched another player
• touches the ball with the hand/arm, unless the goalkeeper has clearly kicked or attempted to kick the ball to release it into play, after:
• it has been deliberately kicked to the goalkeeper by a team-mate
• receiving it directly from a throw-in taken by a team-mate

[imp]

It's been a while.

[ChrisJ]

Yay, a new Imp blog!

(I always feel guilty for looking forward to these as they're invariably how Imp's had a horrible weekend. Sorry!)

[imp]

Ha, don't worry about it. Writing the blog is cathartic, and even if it's been a really shitty weekend I'm usually over it by Wednesday at the latest.

[Duncan Gardner]

I recommend this

[imp]

Extract from Law 12 (third bullet):
An indirect free kick is awarded if a goalkeeper, inside their penalty area, commits any of the following offences:
• controls the ball with the hand/arm for more than six seconds before releasing it

I gave an indirect free-kick for this on Saturday I think for the first time ever. Inevitably there were shocked looks from the 14-year-old goalkeeper and cries of outrage from his team-mates. Sadly, the free-kick was wasted.

Often, I'll hold up my hand and start ticking off the seconds finger by finger, and that usually prompts the keeper to release the ball. Thierry Henry used to do this when the law was first introduced and no referee anywhere was bothering to implement it.

[treibeis]

I gave an indirect free-kick for this on Saturday I think for the first time ever. Inevitably there were shocked looks from the 14-year-old goalkeeper and cries of outrage from his team-mates. Sadly, the free-kick was wasted.

In the game I saw last Sunday (Greek regional fourth division), the home team were a goal up with about ten minutes to play. So the keeper started trying it on. Every time he had the ball in his hands, he'd clutch it to his chest, do a Big Daddy Splash and lie on his stomach in the six-yard box for at least five seconds. The visitors were going spare, but the referee did nothing, not even the "get up" gesture.

Happily, the visitors equalised in stoppage time, with a goal that probably should have been disallowed for a three-man foul on the same goalkeeper. (He ended up in the back of the net with his legs in the air and took an embarrassingly long time to disentangle himself from the net.)

Then, at the final whistle, a mass non-brawl broke out, which interested neither the referee (he simply walked to the dressing room at the far end) nor the three on-duty Plod (who continued to neck their energy drinks and stare at their phones as if nothing were happening (probably because nothing of note was actually happening).)

[imp]

Wise ref. Of course, as everyone was still on the field of play he should have been taking names and notes and gesturing towards the police officers, and then spent his evening writing a long and detailed disciplinary report. But given how many people bother reading those reports and for all the difference they make, he probably did the right thing.

[DPDPDPDP]

It's been a while.

Welcome back. Great point about the blue card, probably being unnecessary if ref’s dished out more yellow and red cards for the ridiculous amount of dissent, which as you say filters it’s way all through football because amateurs and juniors see their heroes doing it every Saturday and think well if they can do it, so can I, and it means that refs like yourself have to put up with all manner of shit.

[JVL]

Before one of our matches in the Valley Senior League last year, the ref informed us all that he wouldn't stand for any crap. The message was that any discussion of any of his decisions would result in a yellow card. With us being all such terribly nice chaps, this was of course hardly necessary...

[imp]

New blog about the weekend's game, which didn't go well. Don't feel guilty, ChrisJ!

[ChrisJ]

Fucking hell, Imp. As, you say, dark.

You know that whatever happened, it wasn't what you're feeling happened? It never is. That's not what the video would show. And even if you got 50% of your calls wrong (and I'm pretty certain you didn't), it still wouldn't justify the shit treatment you got/get regularly?

Be kind to yourself.

(This is a rubbish attempt to make you feel better, but y'know, blokes, emotional illiteracy and all that.)

[imp]

Thanks, Chris, I appreciate the support. There was one foul where one of the girls threw her opponent to the ground directly in front of the home fans, and they still roared in outrage when I blew for the free-kick. So, you're probably right. But on the night, I was feeling something completely different.

I did wonder if any of them got asked at work on Monday morning, "So, what did you do this weekend?" And then they thought to themselves, "I yelled all evening at an amateur referee because my daughter's team were losing."

[Plodder]

I don't know how you do it, imp. Sometimes, reading your blog, it seems like an amateur league ref strike is needed.

[imp]

Falling space hardware fails to crush wanker coach - disappointing, but my hopes weren't high.

[Janik]

Sports Officiating is difficult, part several million of an infinite series.

I was watching a Badminton match yesterday. It was a good game, and ultimately a very close one. The Umpire made the same rare call on three occasions, twice correctly and once wrongly. This genuinely risked flipping who won the match (and as it was a tournament final, the title). The specific issue was the rule in Badminton (also applies in Tennis and Table Tennis, and arguably Squash though it would never happen in Squash) that a player must wait for the shuttle/ball to come over to their side of the net before playing it.

Occasion one, midway through the second game - the player in white reaches his racquet over to kill a pop up. He is bemused by the Umpire's call, but it's shown to be right.* Play continues.
Occasion two, midway through what is now the deciding game, with black leading 12-9 - the player in the white shirt does it again. The Umpire once again calls a foul on him. This time he is upset enough that, whilst not shouting or aggressively dissenting the call, he demands the tournament referee attends the court before he is willing to play onq. He is attempting to get the Umpires call overturned. Obviously the tournament ref doesn't do that - the call stands, and play resumes with white clearly steaming.
Occasion three, which is on match (championship) point to the player in black at 20-18. The shuttle pops up, the player in black slaps it down for a winner and starts celebrating his title. Except this time the Umpire has called a fault on him. And this time, the replays show the Umpire was absolutely wrong - the shuttle was over the net and the black-shirted player's racquet never touched the net or broken the plane of it. Bad call. And, it felt, like a bit of a make-up call for the player in white.

About five minutes later the player in black won the match anyway. But he shouldn't have needed to.

* - Badminton sets a TV camera up looking along the tape of the net. This shows such incidents very clearly. Why players are not allowed to use it to review the Umpires decisions on such calls, give how obviously well it works, is bemusing. Particularly given Badminton has hawkeye to review 'out' calls. Allowing the player in white to review would have obviated his anger as the replays would have clearly shown him the Umpire had it right and he had fouled.

[Janik]

And a personal one from the weekend, an example where you knowing make the technically wrong decision because the technically right one would seem utterly bizarre to most players.

The one rule most people know about (field) Hockey is that its a foul if the ball hits your foot. Right? Well, the isn't the rule exactly. The rules are that deliberately kicking the ball is a foul, and the ball accidentally hitting a foot is a foul if the contact benefits the team whose foot it hit or it disadvantages the opposition. What I had happen on Saturday was an obviously goal bound shot, that had beaten all the defenders and the keeper, bumped off a forward's foot on the goalline on it's way in. Technically this was no foul and the goal should stand. And as soon as I saw this, I knew that was the situation. I also knew giving the goal would cause widespread bemusement (this was a lower level Women's game, so bemusement rather than outrage) whilst disallowing it would be meant with a shrug of "yeah, it hit her foot". So I did what both teams expected and gave a foul against the forwards rather than the goal they technically should have had.

There is no Football equivalent of this anymore, now that FIFA have changed the laws to say a goal cannot go in off the hand or arm, no matter where the hand or arm is positioned (or in the previous regime no matter whether there was intent to play the ball with the hand or arm or not). And that, unusually for FIFA, is probably a good rule. Its one that is generally accepted as right.

[Jobi1]

Interesting work from the referee in this in the aftermath of Aynsley Pears' unfortunate moment on Sunday – goes and has a word with Pears, and appears at one point to be saying "if that happens…". Was he perhaps explaining that Pears could have just grabbed the ball as he'd already made a genuine attempt to kick it clear, so it would therefore not have been a free kick for handling a backpass? Decent of him if so, although perhaps not what Pears needed to hear immediately in that moment! Do refs do a lot of in-game rule explaining to try to help players out like that?

[ad hoc]

I wondered what would have happened if he had picked it up (and it had been a foul to do so. The indirect free kick would have been taken from 50 cm from the goal line? That seems ...odd (and if defenders are allowed to make a wall on the goal line as I believe they are regardless of the ten metre rule, practically impossible to score)