Just some random thoughts
Since this is a new thing for me, and since I don't have any recent games (thank goodness I didn't sign up for any Independance Day/Weekend tournaments!), and most of all, because it's a really slow day at work, I thought I'd come up with a few random thoughts - maybe it'll prod me into writing something later.Why is this site anonymous? Easy - I want to, among other things, make the public aware of my thought processes as a referee, but I don't want the consequences! By making it anonymous, that minimizes anyone actually saying, "Hey, that SOB is writing about me!" - which may be true, but chances are, there's plenty of people who have had similar behavior, so you'll never know if it's really you. :) But it does mean that I can't really publicize it a lot - if you like what you read, please pass the URL along - maybe we'll actually get an intelligent dialogue going (eek!).
One thing I really want to write about later on is on tournaments. I've decided, that with a few exceptions, that tournaments are evil - and I say that strictly from my perspective, not from someone with kids in one, or having actually played one myself. Tournaments just seem to be a way to suck the life out of a ref, to generalize, I've seen the following categories for your typical "XYZ Funtime Trophy Tournament" :
* Refs who do tons of games in order to get the most money.
* New refs that don't realize that doing more than three hours will kill your performance and ability.
* Parents who ref while waiting for their kid to play.
* Refs who are bullied into it by their assignor.
There are expeptions both in tournaments and in referees who do them, but I want to expand on this further later on.
I also admit, the design of the page isn't jazzy, isn't glitzy, isn't fashionable. But it works, it was quick to set up, and it's easy to update; and, since it's sharing bandwidth with a couple other projects I do, it's nice that it's low bandwidth.
I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who's knowledgable enough about the game to follow along, regarding the differences between the National Federation of High Schools (who publish the "rules" for the high school game - versus the Laws for FIFA matches) - I'm sure there will be a nice long rant on that, but in short, I think they just want to justify their existance - what rule changes (and signals) they want to impliment could far more easily be done by saying, "We use FIFA rules, with the following exceptions." But that would just be too easy.
Enjoy the long weekend, everyone!