Full moon on the pitch

Last weekend was a full weekend of soccer. Several weeks back I was asked to take a game on a specific date to a potentially volatile soccer match. I accepted because I know there is not many in my league who could handle this.

I'm just going to call these teams green and red for a little sake of animitity. The problem first starts with the home league. Friday mid-afternoon I had a full crew and some good referees who could assist. I felt it was a good start. Friday night I get an e-mail from that league's coordinator stating the usual song and dance about needing more referees and provided the list. I was shocked to see an AR missing from my game. I was pissed. I then discovered early the next morning that same AR on a class 4 U12 girls match? I was like, "WTF?!?!" I was pretty pissed a the referee and I was about to let him have it at the field because my game was where he was coming off but he was first to inform me he was pulled off by the coordinator. I was fuming. I spent that morning calling referees out of my little circle but knowing in the back of my head, it was a no go because they had games already.

I did the unthinkable and went to the U13 boys game next field and politely recruited a referee to AR my match. I had worked with Patrick before and I know he could handle it, but a part of me felt bad because I broke up one band to fill the other. I found out later his U13 game went well which made me feel better and he noticed my game was pretty heated.

You see I broke out with the cards already when things were getting out of hand. I had one kid in particular who did a two footed tackle, just clipped the player. I played the advantage and informed him I was coming back to him. Ball goes out of play and I issue the card. 15 minutes later a ball goes out for a green corner kick and red blasts the ball to the parking lot. I pulled the card out to caution him and noticed he looked familliar. I looked at his number and looked in my book and saw there was already a number 3. So I showed the red. Parents went ballistic. Coaches went ballistic. They kept whining and compaining for most of the first half. I heard, "let them play ref." Which I have now concluded that is code for, "Let us kick the crap out of one another." I do know this. The second half, it was much quieter.

On Sunday I did another game, U19 Boys copper...by myself! Still I felt I could handle it. After all I have done amatuer 2nd and 3rd division alone. Again it will be green vs. red (a different league). So as the play goes, red is fouling like it was out of style. 2 players are flirting with persistant infringement and one green player was getting fouled so now flirting with a team persistant infrindgement. The first card came out was from number 9 red who took part of fouling this one green player. He said, "But ref, it was my first foul of the game." I said, "Maybe, but I stated there was a pattern being noticed after the 3rd time this one player was fouled." Then a couple more players earned their own PI but the one star player was left alone after that. So I have 3 cards for red, none for green.

Second half comes around and now green is starting to get agreesive. I carded one for an reckless challenge and another for Delay restart. I figured with that, red didn't feel I was singling them out. However, I had one red player do a two handed push off the ball. I said play on and just like the day before was going to come back to caution. Well the next stoppage happened with red scored a goal, so I awarded the goal and a caution to that one red player.

16 minutes later ball moves on and in my periphial vision I just notice the same player who did an off the ball foul tripped a player. So he left me no choice but to send him off. I could have done 2 more with the PI players but I told each one of them they were on borrowed time and they got the message.

The worse part was at the end of the game after I told the coach i would write it up in a way they would give him the minimum (1 game) and we shake hands, some overzealous parent comes my way with the camera wanting to show me something. I said something short of get that *(&^ing camera out of my face and of course he accuses me of a bad attitude.