RefBlog

Apologies for the downtime

Sorry for the downtime - apparently sometime this weekend the servers settings went back to defaults, and attempts to go here... got you a cat.

I noticed it this afternoon, and things seem to be better now. (more)

31 March '08 - 17:01 - - default| Only one comment - § ¶

Annual Review of Proposed Law Changes

The IFAB annual meeting is coming up, and it's always fun, or as least as fun as it can be during the off-season, to look over the proposed law changes and try to figure out what the point of them are. This is the smallest, quietest year I've seen since I started watching the IFAB agendas - nothing major proposed, nothing wacky, nothing to make you go, "Hmmmm." Stay awake, if you can.

Law 1: The Field of Play
(proposed by Wales)
Change the length of width of a pitch from an international match from a range of sizes to an absolute (110 to 120 in length and 70 to 80 yards in width, to 115 x 75). The idea behind the proposed change is to keep home teams in international play from jiggering the dimensions of their pitch to their advantage.

Will it pass? It may, although I'm leaning toward no. But I think the bigger question is, "Should we care?" I have to admit, I don't. It doesn't affect 99.9 percent of matches in the world, which means it should hold less than .1% of my attention.

Law 2: The Ball
(proposed by FIFA)
FIFA changed the logos used on soccer balls in May of 2007, and they want the Laws to reflect these changes. There's some updates in text, but other no change in substance.

Will it pass? Probably, although I still don't care.

Revisions of the Laws of the Game
(proposed by FIFA)
FIFA wants to have another major rewriting of the Laws - no changes in substance, but they want to incorporate a number of other official publications into a single book, such as the Questions and Answers, Additional Instructions, and other materials.

Will it pass? I would say yes - there's no reason not to consolidate all the various official publications, but I don't think it's going to be as dramatic as it sounds. I think, instead of changing the language in the LOTG, ala the last rewrite, they're just going to add all the supplemental material directly into the Law Book, instead of having them separate. This will mean there will be some changes in how some of the laws are written, but there will be nothing substantially different. Overall, this is a good thing, since 90% of us never read anything other than the law book we get at our recert classes. I don't even know how long this process would take - if the plan is for it to take a year or two, expect the next couple of years to be quiet at the annual meeting, to avoid additional rewrites - again, not a bad thing. (more)

25 March '08 - 22:45 - - default| two comments, already - § ¶

Well, it's nice to know

Well, it's official: the quest to upgrade will have to wait another year, at least. I'd been itching to upgrade to State for a while, and now that my wife and I are starting to talk children, I hoped that this year I'd be able to do it before a little tyke starting taking up a lot of my time. I knew it would be a stretch, because I'm well behind in the required number of centers needed. So, I asked the head referee in these parts and got an affirmative: it's a hard-and-fast rule, especially with upgrades to State and above.

Unfortunately for me, it's probably going to take another two years to hit the proper number, because last year we finally found that U17 and U18 games don't cut it for upgrades to State, which is a huge hit, because there's so few U19 youth teams available, and if you take a couple weeks out of the season for vacation, or a large youth tournament (like Regionals, or USA Cup, which I'm considering doing again, since I had excess vacation time at work last year), you miss out on a good chunk of adult games - because their season tends to run for less than three months.

Over the last few months, I considered taking another job - I had a good offer, too, but ended up turning it down because of longer hours. I mean, I spend so little time at home right now between work (and I usually finish work by 4pm!) and gym, which ranges from 30-90 minutes a day (toss in my trainer, and we add an extra half-hour for that one day) - and that's just the off-season, trying to keep in shape for when spring comes. How am I supposed to do any of that when you toss a kid into the mix?

I think once again, working the referee ladder is a young-person's game, and I started 10 years too late. So, it may be perma-7 for me for quite some time - maybe maybe even after the magic number has come-and-gone. (more)

19 March '08 - 10:17 - - default| three comments, already - § ¶

10 Best of 2007: When do you fight the fight?

A radio-based comedy group in Canada once said, "'A good offense is a good defense.' You know who said that? Mel, the cook on 'Alice.'" Speaking of Canadian, if there's anyone in the soccer community up there that isn't familiar with what a hijab is now, they need to be clubbed with a baby seal, because they've been in the news last year a lot. Unfortunately, the issue doesn't seem to be resolved, and people don't seem to be taking my advice to be pro-active about anything, let alone head-scarves, that might cause someone to second-guess how safe you are.

It seems fitting to bring to a close the annual "Best of" time killer with the plea once again to remember the "Ounce of prevention" cliché (which is a cliché because it's correct).

When do you fight the fight?
I received an email from the editor of The Global Game the other day asking my opinion regarding the exclusion of Asmahan Mansour, an eleven-year-old, from a soccer game in Quebec. The exclusion was because she wouldn't remove her hijab (commonly referred to as a headscarf) - as you can imagine, this has caused quite a furor in the Great White North. Rather than go through all the details, here are a number of articles on the subject:

Quebec soccer officials won't punish hijab rule

FIFA to discuss hijab controversy

Hijab-clad soccer girl turfed

Ontario, Quebec differ over soccer head scarf ban

Apparently the provincial authority in Quebec stands by the referee decision, Ontario's says it was incorrect (although they have no authority), and the Canadian Soccer Association has been staying quiet. Apparently the issue will come up with FIFA, but if anything is determined, well, who knows?

There was a similar issue a few years ago in Australia but I'm unable to find an active link to the story anymore. In that case, the authorities said the referee was incorrect in excluding the player, the USSF has made it very clear that religious coverings are allowed (PDF) as long as they are safe.

The reason I'm not going into depth to rehash everything, is because I want to remind people to be proactive on this kind of stuff. While it's impossible for me as a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), to understand what it's like to live as a Muslim in this culture (even if you think Canada doesn't count - it's close enough for my point), I have a pretty good understanding of fighting battles to do everyday things (more)

12 March '08 - 08:58 - - default| Only one comment - § ¶

Fifth Anniversary!

I scanned down the front page of the blog (to see if I needed to move the sock review up to the Feature Articles section, and inadvertently glanced at the archives list and saw that I'd been writing on this blog for five years now. Not only that, that's five years on a consistent basis (OK, less consistently during the off season, but do I need to say this again: "I went to the gym. I sweated. A lot." ?)

For those who care, due to subsequent edits and various other hoo-hah, the very first entry of RefBlog does not show up in the June 2003 archives. It is, however, here.

On more than one occasion I've been temped to claim that this is the oldest referee blog on the internet; I've seen a few older blogs that were written by referees, but the experiences of officiating weren't the primary focus. In any event, I'm very confident that this is the oldest blog on the internet about a sports official, in any sport, let alone soccer. The question of course, is does this anniversary mean anything? In and of itself, no. I hope that it's the content of this blog that makes it interesting for players, fans, and officials to read - the length of time only makes it a bit more visible. I also hope it's the content that sets this blog apart from anything available on the internet or in print: official USSF referee blogs are... nice. They tell you how hard it is to get to their level, how good the games were, how exciting it was - but none of the shit. And if you referee, there's shit to deal with - there's shit from players and coaches and fans and administrators, and let's be truthful: the USSF does not want us to hear about that. Books in print tell us all about the big leagues, but not as much as how they got there - when I read Collina's book, The Rules of the Game, I hoped to read how he marched up the ranks to become the most famous referee in the world - but didn't hear a word about it.

OK, that's fine. The USSF and FIFA serve many masters, and there are far more dues-paying coaches and players than there are whistle-blowers. If a FIFA referee goes on the public stage and says, "Coaches are prats and most don't the know the rules of the same from foosball," it's going to affect their bottom line - even if it's 100% true and buoys the referee corps to new levels of morale.

I'm not famous and I'm not going to be - I referee in the same leagues that most of us play in or watch in lawn-chairs. If it was baseball, we'd call it the sandlot leagues; I haven't found an equivalent for soccer, but it's youth and adult games with people who take the same seriously, even if they're only playing for a t-shirt on a crappy field. And because of that, I'm willing to say there's shit to deal with and what that shit is composed of. There's also a heckuva lot of good stuff in the game, too, which is why those of us who continue to referee keep doing it - the good and the beautiful far outweigh the bad, and I want people to know that too, although when the bad comes it often doesn't feel like it.

This blog has always been about two things: for myself to blow off steam, keep sane, and try to figure out what's going on (good and bad, my fault and not). I've always been a bit of a writer, albeit not a serious one; I've been venting steam and causing controversy since high school. But controversy or not (and there's been a fair bit of that about me and soccer, even before I started reffing - let's say even if I had the desire to get a National badge, there's too much of me "in print" for it to happen), writing is how I keep a both level head and analyze my own actions. Secondly, it's for everyone else who's not a referee to see what it's like wearing that third uniform; the game changes drastically when you put it on - and the more you understand and how we look at the game (because it is different from everyone else on the pitch), the better you'll understand why we make certain calls, even if you don't agree with them.

Basically, I wanted to thank those of you who have been reading this blog - I never knew if I'd get any readers as all, let alone people subscribing to the RSS feeds, writing comments, correcting my mistakes, and encouraging me to go forward. When I decided to write a journal (which came first), and then publish it on a website, it was mostly a "What the hell" type of deal (as in, "What the hell - nobody else speaks in public for the refs". That "What the hell" deal is still happening five years later, which makes sense now that I think about it - I think I used the same phrase when I decided to become a referee in the first place. (more)

03 March '08 - 18:18 - - default| Only one comment - § ¶

Going up a level

I knew going into this match that it would not be my best; it involved a team playing at a different level, not only with skills, but with acceptable levels of physical play, that I had not reffed before, except for a couple of fouth officials and one line. On the team there was at least one player who regularly started on a USL division 1 squad, one retiree, and a bunch of people who want to make it to that level. I'd have to adjust to tempo, differences in where the play would go, and degree of physical play.

For the first time in a long time, I was a greenhorn. Now why the team that was full of retired USL players garnered a full squad with a National referee at the helm, while I did the active team solo, I don't know - but there it was. And I think, after taking about 20 minutes to get a feel, and making a couple of poor positioning choices (choices that may had been mitigated with proper ARs), I did OK. My biggest mistake? Not asking for an informal assessment, as I really could have learned a lot from someone focusing on me for ninety minutes.

The good news is that it was competitive - especially after the kids (kids being 18-year-olds) scored a very nice goal early. While I tried to let a lot go before then, especially given what I was told earlier - but things were ratcheted up a notch, and I tried to clamp down. Here's the problem I had, and I'm going to split it into three parts:

1. I've been told before that the higher the level of play, the more crap you should allow (after all, these are people who are giving up a lot for the chance at going professional).

2. But you're also told that the players will let you know where the game should be at - if you're too tight or too loose.

3. Finally, MLS players have gone on record that they'll go as far as the referee allows them, and they do try to "work" the referee.

So how the heck am I supposed to actually judge if I let enough, too much, or not enough, go? Assuming item #3 also applies to USL Division 3/NPSL, does that mean #2 is no longer valid? And even if not, item #1 means making that self-assessment on #2 all the more difficult! I suppose you could say it comes with games over time, but I'm unlikely to get a center of this quality anytime this year - which is another reason I'm kicking myself for not asking the referee committee for a coaching session.

The good news is that despite a physical game, both coaches seemed OK with things - both seemed to make good points when I asked them for their own opinions and suggestions (and they even made the same ones, and it's hard to argue against that), and even the players seemed OK. Moreover, I seemed to feel a lot more comfortable in the second half, even as things were heating up (it was 2-1 for the school until late in the game when they iced it with a few minutes left); as players wanted things their way, I was happily smiling as I disagreed (something I didn't in the first half).

Damn, that was fun.

01 March '08 - 19:50 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶