Another one bites the dust..

..make that two. I was refereeing a Major Division match. I'm just going to call them red and green. I anticipated a problem between these two teams but for 40 minutes things seem to be going well. Then at the 41st minute I had a green play after he knew he lost the challenge, tackle a red player from behind, chopping a player from behind (both legs in the air chopping the back of the opponents legs). So I sent him off with the red card. Unfortunately that is where hell broke loose. At half time the green captain came to me and told me how unfair that call was.

Then in the second half, despite the Penalty Kick for the green, which was blown with a great save by the red keeper, the green captain still didn't know when to quit. When he brought up the red card situation, I informed him, he was not to continue about that. He then shouts, "Hey guys, we can't talk to the referee about fairness." At that time, I let him know he well deserved this yellow (without going into the 3 P's of dissent which by then he reached all three).

I thought by then things were calming down, I tightened the calls a bit. Then a red was fouled. My AR had the best view. Flagged it, I whistled it. I went to the AR to ask what he saw. He said, "green fouled, but then #10 on the red retaliated with an elbow. I would give him a caution." I cautioned him a minute earlier for kicking the ball away after being called offside. I gave him his second caution (it could have been a straight red). In 20/20 hindsight, I should have given green his caution for grabbing a jersey. I was just told my AR initially he held the red. Had I known it was a jersey pull at the time, I would have given him a yellow and some justice would have been done.

The Post game wasn't so much fun as he wanted to confront me. After saying "What a fucking horrible call." I replied with, "Can I quote you on that on my send off report so you can get a few more Sundays off?"