I was assigned as an assistant referee for a boys U-13, Division 5E
game that Sunday morning before the boys U-16, Division 2 game that I
would ref on another field
that afternoon. I e-mailed the ref to confirm the field and kickoff time
and he responded, “That’s what Arbiter (the assigning website) says. I
will see you Sunday.”
The ref
was supposed to call the home coach to confirm field and kickoff time but he did not. I
did not want to be standing with him and the other assistant ref on an empty field that day so I called the home
coach to confirm instead. It went downhill from there.
The ref
arrived at the field and we checked the player passes. Sometimes with
people who do not know me or do not read these articles, I
simply say that I have a good deal of experience and leave it at that,
hoping that they will listen to what I say if I give them any pointers.
For
the coin toss, the ref told the
visiting team
to simply choose which side it wanted rather than him flipping a coin. I
later asked the ref if he needed a coin and he said that he did not. I
told him that since we did not have a coin toss, the
losing team could protest and have the game replayed but he did not seem
interested in what I was saying.
So we started the game. The ref,
around 40 years old with a couple of years of
experience, was lazy. He ran in a straight line down the middle of the
field 25 yards from one
goal to 25 yards from another goal. With just two games to ref that day,
it’s not as if he had to
pace himself. He should have run in a diagonal, which is really more
like a half-open scissor, corner flag to corner flag, penalty arc to
penalty arc. Run down the middle of the field and you will
miss fouls by the touchline, often in a hot zone in front of the team
benches.
But he did not miss many fouls as there was little to call. He blew the whistle after every goal, which he should
not have done. Just blow the whistle for balls that just go over the goal line when it’s not obvious a goal has been scored.
The
ref allowed the home coach to openly dissent just about
every decision of the few calls that went against the home team. That’s
obviously not a good thing to let a coach give a running commentary of
the officiating as it often contributes to an
atmosphere in which players stop playing soccer and began to focus on
what the ref is calling (or not),
which leads to more robust challenges and more vocal dissent.
Thankfully, that did not happen in
this game but it certainly could have.
The ref then whistled two
offside decisions against the visiting team in which the player was
onside. As AR1, I was in line with the second-to-last
defender and he did not even look at me and simply called with what he
thought he saw.
I was relieved when we reached the 35-minute mark
of the second half with the visiting team winning 6-1.
The final
whistle was going to blow and the world’s worst referee was going to
survive this game. We went into the 36th minute and the visiting coach
asked him, “How much time do you have
left?”
The ref responded, “10 minutes. I started the half at 10 minutes to 10.”
Play came down into my end for a corner kick and I told the ref that we were in the
36th minute. As play moved upfield, the visiting coach said to me, “It does not matter because we are winning
by five goals but this game should be over.”
The ref ended the game
six minutes later.
That’s the problem you have when you do not have a stopwatch on one
wrist and another watch as backup on the other wrist. I let the world’s
worst referee look at my
stopwatch, showing we played nearly 42 minutes in the second half and he
told me, “That’s because you started your stopwatch early.”
I
told the powers that be that he needed
to be assessed so he
could possibly get better and was told that there have been complaints
about him. This game was two years ago. I never saw him again, either at
a ref meeting or at a soccer field.
For the good of the game, it’s best that the world’s worst referee is no
longer officiating.