More looking at the media
Enough with the silly numbers; I imagine I'll be doing this a lot during the off-season...I love this article in the Stanford Daily: Confessions of a Soccer Referee. It's done so nicely - it's hard to tell if he's being serious, or merely playing into the expectations of the lay-fan.
One thing in particular stuck in my mind, because, especially with older teams, it's become part of what I say to the captains: "For those of you Computer Science freaks who don’t understand the beautiful game of soccer, let me explain. A soccer referee has three items that help him control the game: his whistle, yellow card and red card." I started this year telling them that indeed, my tools are whistles and plastic, and that if there's going to be a problem with a teammate, they know them better than I, and they can keep things from escalating. I know from experience, and if you don't referee I would be so privileged if you said you knew from reading this site, that those aren't the only weapons (we use speech, screech, and can even go as far as manipulate and lie), but for purposes of helping us in our job, it's a great way to get some help - assuming the troublemaker isn't the captain.
Later, the article just gets's funny, he describes what happens with red cards, and then, "This is why I referee... I want to hand out as many cards as I can." This is great bait - pull those suckers in, thinking they'll finally get confirmation of what every ref is thinking, and then.... nope - we get the real reason. Don't know what it is by now? Read the article.