Into The Book - EPISODE 4
We are excited to jump right into the fall season with our Adult Amateur and Advanced Level youth matches in North Carolina and South Carolina. This is done through leagues such as UPSL, First Flight League (FFL), MLSNext, USL Academy and others. If you’re reading this you probably have an interest in working these matches and developing as a referee. This blog will serve as a place to see clips and feedback on advanced level games that peer referees are working on and your own matches. We hope you are able to gain some helpful insights from the posts throughout the season.
We are days away from the start of the FLL and other leagues will follow quickly as we get into the fall season as we get into August. This post will wrap up the Spring seasons that finished with their championships in the summer as we as serving as a jump start to a great Fall season. We hope to build on the Points of Emphasis from the spring and some will be new points which will continue to develop the level of officiating that we offer the leagues that we serve. Enjoy this post and continue all the hard work see from the Spring and Summer as we head into a busy fall season!
FFL Misconduct Data - Spring 2022
UPSL Misconduct Data - Spring 2022
Total Matches - 21
Players Misconduct
Total Cautions - 59 / 2.8 cautions per game
Send Offs - 5 / .24 Send Offs per game
Coach / Staff Misconduct
Total Warnings - 1 / .05 warnings per game
Total Cautions - 11 / .5 Cautions per game
Total Send Offs - 2 / .09 send offs per game
FFL Cautions
Total Matches - 51
Players Misconduct
Total Cautions - 232 / 4.5 Cautions per game
Send Offs - 16 / .31 Send offs Per game
Coach / Staff Misconduct
Total Warnings - 11 / .22 warnings per game
Total Cautions - 23 / .45 Cautions per game
Total Send Offs - 2 / .04 send offs per game
UPSL Cautions
2022 Points of Emphasis
- Mobbing / Dissent by Action
- Technical Area Behavior and Management
- Delaying the Restart
- Persistent Offenses
Technical Area Management
We are no longer new to having Warnings, Cautions and Send Offs available to Coaches and Team personnel. In the Spring 2022 we saw the use of these in several matches throughout the season resulting at a rate of .70 warnings, cautions OR Send Offs given to coaches / staff per game given during matches in the Spring of 2022. There were 22 more cautions given than warnings in the Spring of 2022.
This data, along with some examples we will show below, shows that we are potentially missing opportunities to given formal warnings to coaches which could prevent needing to show a caution later in a game or prevent tensions from escalating as the game goes on. As we start off the Fall season we are going to highlight several areas that we want to focus on for this season when to comes to technical area management.
Being Prepared, Knowing the Laws of The Game and Using your Personality.
Being Prepared
If your field does not have a technical area painted down, how are you going to ensure that the coaches are staying in it? Cones pre existing markings are options to be used. When doing your pre-game walk of the field this is an important matter to discuss as a crew. Take a look at these pictures to see what a coned out Technical Area may look like on a match. All you have to do is ask the coaches to put down their own cones. Lack of preparation will lead to coaches thinking they have free rein to move up and down their sideline. It’s amazing what a simple set of comes can do for you and your AR1!
Laws of The Game - Warnings, Cautions and Send Offs
These three tools are not new to us anymore. It is VITAL that everyone knows what actions fall into mandatory warnings, cautions or send offs for coaches / staff. By now EVERYONE should know that a warning to a coach is not just an informal thing. It is now a documentable item that must go into a match report and is given to a coach by saying “coach, this is your formal warning” . 4th official, AR or Referee can give the formal warning. If a coach tosses the ball away from the opposing team to delay their restart is it a caution or a send off? All things that we all must know.
See this example of a Red Card supplemental write up in the above picture. It shows that the referee crew gave the coaches repeated warnings and thought they could manage the coaches. This resulted in coaches being shown a red card and sent off.
However, there were no FORMAL warnings given to any coaches. If you have to continually go to a coach and ask them to stop a behavior, or they are constantly dissenting then USING A FORMAL WARNING OR YELLOW CARD IS MANAGING IT. The best referees use the tools in and out of the Laws of The Game.
This is a great example because it shows up what escalation happen in a game. By not warning a coach when they are showing minor or low level dissent you’re telling them that you are okay with them doing this. If they are showing dissent in a visual and public way and you don’t show a caution, guess what? You’re showing them this is okay behavior in your match. This not all on the referee either. The 4th official and AR1 are able to issue warnings (they must be communicated to the referee as soon as possible so that multiple warnings are not issued without a caution) and you can bring the referee over to issue a caution. It’s not an excuse that you don’t have the whistle for it not to be dealt with.
TAKE A MINTUE - Before we continue I want to pause here because we just used an example from one of our own matches that you all are working and you will see more examples from matches that all of you are working. We will use examples from UPSL, FFL USL, WPSL and more. At some time you will find yourself on the good side and sometime on the bad side of clips, pictures or match reports used as examples. This is not done to put down you down or highlight mistakes for everyone to see. Simply put, we all will make mistakes and we can all learn from each other’s highs and lows. It gives a chance for all of us to get better and learn. If at anytime you see a fellow referee making a mistake and you feel it is now a good time to put yourself above them and put them down, just wait. Your Turn will come, none of us are perfect and will end up on a clip somewhere, sometime.
Personality - use it!
Each of us have our own personalities on the field. We handle situations differently and approach them each in a unique way. Don’t be afraid to try and develop your on field personality when dealing with Coaches.
These next two videos show how situations can escalate when we choose to ignore behavior.
The first video shows a coach that is frustrated with fouls or lack of them. We see the 4th official going over several times to calm the coach down and we can see that he is effective when he is over there. However, you should not have to do that multiple times. In this clip it is done over the course on only about 10 minutes of match time. Many referees will say “well, I went over and he sat back down and stopped” almost any referee coach will follow up with “how many times did you have to go over there?” Being able to use our personalities to diffuse situations is an important tool that we need to develop as referees.
What is in your tool belt other than “coach, I hear you” or “I’ll talk to the referee at half time”. What are you going to tell a coach when they are upset and yelling? Working on phrases to use in certain situations before you step on the field is key.
Letting a coach know that you hear what they’re saying but you “have a foul / no foul there” or “Coach, I hear you but I cannot keep coming over here without it resulting in more than me talking to you” We are not there to make the coach feel better about our our team’s calls.
This second video shows two coaches arguing with each other. It is a visual argument and very public in nature and is becoming aggressive. Telling a coach to calm down or relax is not enough in this situation and as a crew just talking about it and being aware is not enough. By not dealing with this incident you are risking a much bigger incident later in the match as well as this aggression spilling out onto the field with the player or even a big incident between the coaches.
A caution to both coaches is expected here and if either of them has left the Technical Area they can be sent off for Leaving the Technical Area in an Aggressive / inflammatory manner. A situation like this can become unsafe and must be dealt with.
Foul Management
Here we are going to go outside the points of emphasis to the area of foul management. Many times simply calling a foul and / or showing misconduct is not enough to control a situation. Management after a foul, when used well, can dramatically change the amount of dissent or confrontations that happen in a game.
There are times that we need to think as referees after a challenge is committed. Assess if the challenge requires no misconduct, Yellow or Red Card. These seconds to asses a situation can allow us to come out with the correct misconduct. There are also times that showing a quick caution can show that we have control of a situation and show players that we have everything handled and they do not need to intervene. This first video shows two challenges the difference showing a quick Yellow Card a do for defusing a situation.
Video 1 - Challenge #1
In the first challenge you see a Careless Challenge that Stops a Promising Attack. The Red Attacker is clearly frustrated by the challenge and is ready to come up yelling at the referee. By the time he is up and turned to the referee she has her Yellow Card (Off Camera) displayed. Red #19 has gotten what he wants out of the challenge and has no reason to dissent. The referee doesn’t even have to say “relax he’s getting a card.”
Challenge #2
You can see that the referee correctly calls the foul and is moving in quick. She handles the foul very well as it does not, on it’s own, require a caution as there are some mixed considerations for carless vs reckless. Directly after the foul is committed #20 Black pushes the attacker while he is still on the ground. At this point a caution must be issued. The referee does an excellent job of being in before the Red players and is even between them, however, the Yellow Card is not displayed until after the confrontation is finished. While the caution is not a guarantee to prevent the confrontation it is an important tool that we need to know when to use.
Getting the most out of our interactions with players is important every time we talk with them, call fouls or issue cautions. Our objective with these interactions can change but will usually be to either defuse a situation or change a behavior. This second video shows what good eye contact and body language can do to help get a point across to a player and show everyone on the field how you feel about a challenge.
Video 2 - Challenge #1
The referee does an excellent job of calling this foul and getting in very quick with her Yellow Card out. This challenge is only missing 1 or 2 considerations and it could be a Red Card and could have players from the blue team upset even with a Caution being show. The referee does a great job of not only having the caution out but her body language shows this player is mine and I am going to handle the situation. The blue player that was fouled looks up and sees that and has no future issue. Once White #21 stands up the referee talks to him and with great eye contact to tell him how close he was to being sent off.
Challenge #2
This second challenge is committed by the same player and is certainly borderline careless vs reckless. In this section we are not focusing on Careless vs Reckless but focusing on the interaction between the referee and White #21. A player on this level knows that they are lucky to be staying on the field after a challenge like this one. The important part of this is to let the blue players know that you did not like the challenge. Blue needs to know that you know White #21 close to being sent off. You can see that the referee doesn’t let the player walk away. She makes him stop, looks him in the eyes while making sure he is looking back at her and makes SURE HE KNOWS how close he is.
If you would like to brush up on other Points of Emphasis that we did not cover in this post take a look at Episode 1 where we cover Dissent and other topics.
We hope all of these topics here give you a great starting point for this Fall Season and we want everyone to continue the hard work that you have been putting in over the first two thirds of the year. Know that the hard work for studying the game, laws as well as physical training will continue to put us in the high levels of officiating we want to offer our leagues.