On the other side of the Whistle
This past World Cup saw plenty of Referees get their decisions questioned. Everyone is able to make their opinion known and make comment as well. However no one could ever saw that a referee was not taking the game seriously. Each referee was putting their all into every game whether it was the first or the last game of the tournament. Even the referee took the Coasta Rica v Poland game seriously even if the outcome didnt matter at all.
Now getting to my problem at the moment. When I referee, I take games seriously, sure some might be more light-hearted and other more serious but that does not mean I do not give the same amount of effort to each game. No matter what game I referee, I know I am getting paid and there is a standard for that. A referee accepts an assignment and fee to referee a game so he or she should referee at the best of their ability and give all their effort.
I say this because during this summer I have been playing in a saturday/sunday coed recreational league. I have been going as a pick up player, I just ask the teams there if they might need another player and most of the time they allow me to jump in. Each team however pays dues over $1200 worth for 8 games at least. And that doesnt include uniforms and getting to and from the games. The league seems willing to only pay 2 referees and one of them is there for games on saturday and sunday and other one seems to rotate between the main referee's son and friend. All three of these people bring a bad name to referees. I know its only a sunday league but that doesnt mean you can be texting on your cellphone during the game or sitting in the middle of the field waiting for the next game to start. Worst of all is the positioning. Neither referee is with the 2nd to last defender on the touch line or even on the goal line when the ball calls for it. Sometimes the main referee is talking to the players on the bench and then sees someone fall over and calls it from the opposite half of the field.
These referees do not take their job seriously nor do they realize the money being spent on the other side by the players themselves. I am not condoning referee abuse by yelling at the referee but I will say I have had to talk to the referees about how can they call a foul when they arent even in a position to see the foul.
The AR is going to see one of the games in the league I am talking about this upcoming weekend, maybe he will disagree and tell me that as being a player my vision is blinded, but for right now I feel disgusted.
5 comments:
wow- incendiary stuff. i hope the refs you are referring to are not regular 22 and you readers. adn for th record, i thought that the referees in the world cup were, by and large, horrible.
while you think that the referees were horrible you can not say that they didnt take the games seriously.
i think i would rather someone who wasn't serious over someone who was plainly incompetent or crooked or both.
Just a short note here concerning the comments: for the most part, I think the refs did a pretty good job during the WC06. Heresy, huh? Were there mistakes? Yes. But for the most part, they called the fouls and handed out cards when and where called for. Even in the US-Italy game, if you watch the tape and view it less as a fan and more objectively, I don't think you'd be able to dispute the more controversial calls that the ref made. Even in the Portugal-Ned game, most of the cards were justified and, in fact, had the ref handed out an early red for a foul on Ronaldo, the game may have settled down.
IMHO, one of the biggest problems the refs had in the WC concerned diving. But unless you're out on the field and not watching a dozen replays from 12 different angles, you can't know how hard this is to call. I've called diving once in 5 years, probably because kids at the ages I ref don't know to fall over at the slightest touch. But I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase in efforts to exaggerate the effect of contact during the next season, even among the rec players.
i couldn't disagree with the AR more on the qualiity of WC refereeing. the incompetence was shocking and meanspirited. the inconsistentcy we saw from play to play(think about the calls and non calls in the Spain/Tunisia game as an example). the constant talk throughout germany was about how bad the officiating was- i have watched the cup religiously since we began to be able to see all of the games live (was that first in 94?) and this was far and away the most dismal performance i have seen by the officials. as i have posted bfore, the favoritism shown towards the big teams (with Italy being peerhaps the biggest beneficiary. the penalty against the aussies and the calls in the US game were absurd- i watched tje US game on tv, in an unbiased French bar with italian fans, and everyone there thought the calls against the US were too severe- and don't get me started on the call against Gooch in the Ghana game).
the diving calls, or lack of them, were an embarassment to the game and it is clear that it has to be taken out of the refs hands and be subject to post game video review. i would aslo endorse the idea of a 2nd ref on the field to catch these cheats more effectively (and for lots of other reasons). guys like cristiano ronaldo need to be severely disciplined- expelled from the game if necessary.
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