The Refereeing Thread

[Janik]

Wouldn't have thought so. It may have been a substitution that the coach wanted to make, but it hasn't actually happened.

[ursus arctos]

I wouldn't think so either, but I also didn't think that "substituted" players could stay on the pitch or that managers could revoke substitutions once they were announced.

It may because I grew up with baseball, where a batter is "used" as soon as he is announced, whether or not he ever comes to the plate (what sometime happens is that after the announcement, the opposing manager changes the pitcher to one who throws from the opposite side, leading to the announced batter no longer being of the preferred handedness).

[tee rex]

Can a ref intervene in any other internal team rows? If an outfield keeper has to go in goal, but they can't agree on who? If two players both want to take a penalty and the ball just sits there on the spot, while they glare at each other?

I know team mates have been given cards before for physical fighting, but if it stops short of that ... who can the officials punish? How long does the ref let it continue?

Creative time-wasting opportunities abound here. Some good acting skills needed, but plenty of footballers have had that over the years.

[Capybara]

A couple of queries from Germany at the weekend. At Freiburg, the ref blew for half-time bang on 45 minutes with the score 3-0. Do goal celebrations not count towards added time?

Secondly, at Wiesbaden the defending team brought on the trainer to attend to an injured player after the ball went out for a corner. The referee ordered the player to the sidelines after he'd been sorted. The defending team then substituted that player and the substitute was allowed to come on for the corner. I'd assumed the rule requiring 'injured' players to leave the field after the trainer had come on was to prevent time-wasting so shouldn't the substitute have had to wait until after the corner was taken?

[Ray de Galles]

Surely if he's been injured enough to come off than the fact the treatment wasn't time-wasting has been demonstrated?

[Capybara]

Yes, you're probably right, but it looked like a tactical substitution at the time rather than replacing an injured player.

[imp]

A couple of queries from Germany at the weekend. At Freiburg, the ref blew for half-time bang on 45 minutes with the score 3-0. Do goal celebrations not count towards added time?

If you know that time's up a few seconds after the goal, there's little point in dragging everyone back to the halfway line and then whistling as soon as the re-start's taken.

This weekend I had the pleasure of coaching and coming up against the kind of shite ref that several coaches have labelled me as in the past. Very instructive.

[Satchmo Distel]

Ian, what would you have said to Sarri and the player? "I'll give you 30 seconds to sort this out then I'm resuming the game"?

[caja-dglh]

I guess Sarri should have got a yellow card for time-wasting then?

[elguapo4]

A couple of queries from Germany at the weekend. At Freiburg, the ref blew for half-time bang on 45 minutes with the score 3-0. Do goal celebrations not count towards added time?

Secondly, at Wiesbaden the defending team brought on the trainer to attend to an injured player after the ball went out for a corner. The referee ordered the player to the sidelines after he'd been sorted. The defending team then substituted that player and the substitute was allowed to come on for the corner. I'd assumed the rule requiring 'injured' players to leave the field after the trainer had come on was to prevent time-wasting so shouldn't the substitute have had to wait until after the corner was taken?

The Wiesbaden incident happened at the Dublin derby last night, Rovers were down to ten men when one of their players went down injured having conceded a corner, his team mates were at him to get up because they'd be defending a corner 8 men against 10,he insisted on getting the trainer on and the bench immediately substituted him, he didn't look happy going off.

[treibeis]

" I'll be asking my assignors not to allocate him to another one of our games. Neither in this season, nor in any of the 100 seasons to come."

imp, is that common practice, or is it you using your inside contacts? And does it work the other way around? If, say, a ref scores an accidental hat-trick for your side, disallows half a dozen of your opponents' goals and sends the other team's forward line off for "having too much gel in their hair", can you say, "We'd like him/her every week"?

[imp]

I've written to my assignors before when I've been impressed with young referees - last season we had an unprecedented five on the trot. It helps fast-track the good ones. They told me that they also want to hear from me when I have bad experiences. So I let them know about the weekend's game in a fairly detailed email yesterday morning. (It's not uncommon for clubs to request 'never again this ref'. In the other direction, there's also one club I've refused to referee since they almost chased me off the premises with grill forks a couple of years back.)

I also copied my own club officials in on the email, because it turned out he'd had a horror game involving one of our U10 teams earlier this season, and the club had already asked not to have him assigned to any more of our teams' games this season, home or away. He'd turned up to ref when it should have been his daughter reffing and told the team that he wouldn't be putting up with any shit - apparently she'd had a rough match involving another one of our U10 teams the week before. Then he proceeded to whistle every tiny contact as a foul (exactly as he did in my game) to the point when one father was so incensed he ran on the field and started yelling at him. Don't condone, but understand etc etc.

Now my referee bosses are mad that I didn't go exclusively to them to deal with the matter "internally" ("he's been reffing since 1979 and is one of our best and most experienced refs" - which to me makes it all the more important to lodge a complaint - if he's one of the best refs, then God fucking help us), which is always their way of brushing any problems under the carpet, like the Catholic Church and the Chinese Communist Party. They told me I was hereby called to a sub-meeting with my overlords at our next ref's meeting in a month, no doubt for a bollocking. I told them I won't be coming (I have tickets for Habib Koité, though I didn't mention that as they might not be that interested in my music tastes), and that my club had every right to read my account of the game, and that they should stop being so aggressive when criticised and admit they made a mistake assigning this particular ref to one of my club's games. And that I've no more to say on the matter.

If I get assigned any more games at all above the two I have in the coming fortnight, it'll probably be the fag-end of the shittest leagues. But I seem to get those games anyway, so it can't get much worse. [Sorry for the long-winded answer. It's one of those stupid fucking things that keeps me awake at 3am.]

[treibeis]

No, no, long-winded answers are good.

One of my regulars is a referee. He joined his club in 1971 as a five-year-old, played for all the youth teams, all the adult teams (including several seasons in the Oberliga) and still plays for the Senioren. He's been reffing for about 25 years. Not once has he taken a penny in expenses, from anybody, ever. He's got his ref's pass, yet still pays his entrance fees for all games "weil es sich gehört".

Last summer, he told me that he'd told the powers-that-be that he no longer wanted to referee "Alte Herren" games because they give him too much abuse. I know what he means; I've played in Alte Herren matches, with lads in their mid-30s, who were recently at the top of their game, who have just stepped down from the Oberliga (or higher), who have not yet come to terms with the fact that, well, it's all over.

The powers-that-be tore him a new one. Who did he think he was, telling them which games he wants to officiate. He should be lucky that he's allowed to officiate any games at all, he is.

I'd have told them to go do one. He, because he loves his football too much, accepted what they said, although he didn't like it.

Proper bloke, our Thomas.

[imp]

Blimey, that's hardcore. I buy my own ref uniforms (my club is supposed to pay me back, but I know we have no cash), and I'll buy tickets if it's more than just me going to a Bundesliga game, but I'll always take my measly expenses - they pay for the annual upkeep of my bike that I use to get to games, and the odd vinyl splurge, or a fancy meal for frau imp about once a year. On the other hand, if there was no match fee, I'd probably still do it anyway.

I made the mistake of asking for games outside of Frankfurt. Because I go by bike, they think I can't ref outside the city, but I've told them often enough there are such things as public transport and Car-To-Go. But I end up at the same old shit-holes in town, when now and again I wouldn't mind seeing a quaint village or two. So I asked - could I get a game outside of town every now and again? You'd think I'd asked them to ref the fucking Pokalfinale in Berlin. The same when I had no game one weekend and told them I was around if anyone called off at short notice - got an angry email telling me to wait my turn, not every ref gets assigned a game every weekend (yet they're always going on about the ref shortage). Sure enough (I blogged about it at the time), I got a call at Saturday 9pm, could I do a game tomorrow at 1 as someone called off at the last minute. Who would have thought? Like Thomas, though, I didn't tell them where to stick it. Especially as that particular assignor is one of the ones I like and had nothing to do with the bitchy email.

Right now I'm of the mindset that I want to keep reffing just to be a continually critical pain in their autocratic, closed-shop arses.

[San Bernardhinault]

Maybe that's their retention strategy for pissed off refs?

[imp]

Speaking of retention strategies, I spent another weekend examining my own head after another nightmare game, wondering why the fuck I would spend a Saturday afternoon refereeing a bunch of noisome twats.

[Patrick Thistle]

Is there a danger that players know you blog and could try to see if they can be outrageous enough to get a mention?

[treibeis]

imp, when players are calling your eyesight, parentage and knowledge of the game into question, do they scream "Schiri!" or "Herr Schiedsrichter!"?

Here, I reckon it's a 60:40 split in favour of "Schiri!".

[Sporting]

Is there a danger that players know you blog and could try to see if they can be outrageous enough to get a mention?

I daresay names are changed but I dunno.

[imp]

imp, when players are calling your eyesight, parentage and knowledge of the game into question, do they scream "Schiri!" or "Herr Schiedsrichter!"?

Here, I reckon it's a 60:40 split in favour of "Schiri!".

Nearly always 'Schiri!" Sometimes if they're being calmer and more pointed it's "Herr Schiedsrichter!" If they're genuinely asking me how much longer until their knackered lungs can have a rest at half-time, it tends to be the latter too.

There's one player I regularly bump into who reads the blog, but he's a sane journalist who covers football in the region. My club also links to it on their website, but I doubt anyone bothers to read it, English isn't as widely spoken in Germany as people think. All the names are changed, and no club or specific league is identified - in fact you'd have to comb through the archive to work out that it's even Frankfurt. And even if they do, fuck 'em. There are very few refs willing to talk or write about what a shit job it is, just as very few are prepared to admit that they need more help and support, because there's still a largely macho culture surrounding the milieu that dictates, "Put up with or quit." I don't have a contract specifically forbidding me from writing about it, so they couldn't do anything to stop me aside from firing me.

[imp]

Last night was quiet for an hour. Then, an explosion of anger, shoving, threats, drama and yellow cards. So a potentially exceptional night morphed into the norm...

[ad hoc]

As excellent (and as awful sounding) as ever. No idea what keeps you going, but that's what I always think. A minor point: Good news for pedlars of anger - supplies are still running high. That would be bad news surely? It's more difficult to peddle anger if there's loads of it about.

[imp]

Ha ha - well, you could argue that, or you could say that business is booming due to abundant stocks and continued high demand. Economics has never been my strong point.

[imp]

So, yesterday I finally lost it. In one sense, it took me by surprise. In another sense, it's been a long time coming. And though I probably made a twat of myself, I don't regret it at all.

[imp]

Some questions for you from my latest refereeing online test:

1. While the ball's in play, the goalkeeper - standing on his line - makes a loud and clear criticism aimed at the referee for a previous call. What's your decision, and where does play re-start?

2. Number 6 on the attacking team scores a goal from the edge of the penalty area, but the referee notices before the re-start that his team-mate, number 12, is now on the field of play as the team's twelfth player. As he didn't participate in the build-up to the goal, the referee is not 100% sure that he was on the field of play when the goal was scored. Decision?

3. A goal is scored, but before the re-start the referee determines that the player who scored was on the field of play illegally as his team's twelfth player. What's the decision, and to what should you pay particular attention?

4. Unnoticed by the referee, an attacker scores a goal thanks to an unnatural hand movement. After the defending side protests, the referee asks the goal-scorer what happened and he admits, "Yep, I scored using my hand." Decisions?

5. An attacker is running towards an empty goal when an opposing sub runs on to the field and pulls the attackers shirt over the course of several yards. In the penalty area the attacker indeed falls to the ground, but manages to knock the ball in to the goal. What's the decision?

6. Penalty kicks, and after 11 kicks per team it's still level. The eleventh kicker on the home team now steps up to take the twelfth penalty kick, feeling confident as he's just fired one in. Is this allowed?