"Did I detect a bit of 'Get these turkeys off the field' with that whistle?"
That was me talking to the other referee last night - we've done a lot of work together (although only one affiliated game, at a high school last year), and get along pretty well. He seemed to have a lot more "action" going on in his games than I did. I had one yellow card for a professional foul, which may or may not have been intentional - but from a player perspective, it was a darn good time to foul. No complaints, everything pretty steady.The interesting part, and the part that made giddy came when one of the owners of the league came in to help set up (the usual soccer guy is out-of-town), and we talked a bit about what happened. Basically, I said the same thing I mentioned here, except in abbreviated form - they have all seen me ref tough games enough that it was more curiosity than anything else - but I used it to lower the boom: I asked if next session we could finally have suspensions based on card accumulation, and he agreed. Yes!
This should go a long way to keeping things in check; especially those who are masterful at falling just short of red, but doing enough to piss off and provoke the other team. Nothing is finalized yet, but it looks like we'll keep it simple: three yellow cards and you get a one-game suspension. Since the pair of us are likely to be there almost all winter, it makes a good test for the experiment, to see if we'll remember to record all the infractions (should be simple enough to write the names and dates on back of the rosters - which are kept on-site).
It just needs to be said again.... YES!