Last Friday night, in the Central District, I witnessed something that seemed unsavory and awry. A1 is driving, gets trapped by B1 against the boundary line, A1 blows B1 up. Whistle. Trail signals ‘player control’, then changes to a ‘block.’ 1-and-1. OK, whatever; not a big deal. However, when coach of B1 asks about the change as Trail is walking away from scorer’s table, ref ignores coach and when coach shrieks “you called charge and then you changed it!” Trail replies “No, I didn’t!”
I’m not by any means ‘anti-ref’, I detest the abuse that fans and coaches put toward refs and believe such behavior is an epidemic that our high school sports culture will be faced to reap the consequences of soon. With that said, I was disappointed to see this. Ref in this instance generally does a good job, and has more experience than the two younger guys on his crew (that crew is actually one of the best I’ve seen this year.) Not explaining the reasoning behind the change irks me only a little bit, and I’m sympathetic to the ref in his shoes in that case... but to deny the fact you changed a call when called out? C’mon, man! Just doesn’t set a good example, and instead a bad precedent of sorts, for the other two guys on the crew and the JV refs sitting in the stands to observe.
The Cardinal Sin of Reffing?
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formerfcfan
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Re: The Cardinal Sin of Reffing?
Yeah that’s not great. Either continue to ignore him or go discuss it with the coach to explain the situation.
Re: The Cardinal Sin of Reffing?
formerfcfan wrote: ↑Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:36 pm Last Friday night, in the Central District, I witnessed something that seemed unsavory and awry. A1 is driving, gets trapped by B1 against the boundary line, A1 blows B1 up. Whistle. Trail signals ‘player control’, then changes to a ‘block.’ 1-and-1. OK, whatever; not a big deal. However, when coach of B1 asks about the change as Trail is walking away from scorer’s table, ref ignores coach and when coach shrieks “you called charge and then you changed it!” Trail replies “No, I didn’t!”
I’m not by any means ‘anti-ref’, I detest the abuse that fans and coaches put toward refs and believe such behavior is an epidemic that our high school sports culture will be faced to reap the consequences of soon. With that said, I was disappointed to see this. Ref in this instance generally does a good job, and has more experience than the two younger guys on his crew (that crew is actually one of the best I’ve seen this year.) Not explaining the reasoning behind the change irks me only a little bit, and I’m sympathetic to the ref in his shoes in that case... but to deny the fact you changed a call when called out? C’mon, man! Just doesn’t set a good example, and instead a bad precedent of sorts, for the other two guys on the crew and the JV refs sitting in the stands to observe.
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Agree ! Probably would have been best to at least try to explain, but to just Ignore the coach was not going to defuse the situation at all. I had a friend who was usually pretty well respected as an official, he told me that when he would meet the Captains at midcourt, plus when he would go and shake hands with the coaches pre-game, that he would tell not only the players, but the coaches as well that he knew he was going to make mistakes, but that they would also make mistakes, and he would not try to show them up, and didn't want them trying to show him up. Before his knees gave out on him, he did a lot of tournament games about every year for a number of years.