Anonymous wrote:Didn’t take long for people to blame the ref even in a thread about assault on ref , sad
I was careful to note that I couldn't be certain in this particular instance because I wasn't there. However I'm sure that if you have had kids playing soccer for many years then you, like I, have seen games get out of hand from time to time and feature multiple sendings off. And in every single case that I have directly observed, the referee's performance has been at least partly responsible for the situation. That's not to say that the situation is the referee's fault entirely. But my guess is that there are some refs who never have a game where this happens, and other refs to whom it happens with some frequency.
In general what leads to this type of game is the ref not handing out yellow cards when they are warranted in a U14/U15 and older game. What happens at these ages is that the kids, if they see that the ref will not protect them, start to retaliate and tempers get out of control. This is already a dangerous situation and if the ref realizes what's happening, he needs stay calm, but firmly read both teams the riot act and talk to the coaches and start handing out yellow cards when they are warranted. Unfortunately a ref who has missed a lot of yellow cards already rarely realizes his error (or is incapable of correcting it), and either does nothing or starts calling every little foul and handing out yellow cards when they are not warranted because he is worried that things are getting out of control. Both of these responses further exacerbate the situation. By this point there will likely be angry spectators too. And then the whole thing explodes and I've even seen refs lose tehir temper and start screaming at all and sundry as well. At some point in that chain of events the players have basically lost all respect for the ref, and once that has happened the ref will never regain control. He sends people off, but that just makes everyone angrier still so he has to keep doing it. And don't get me wrong - the sending off offenses are real and the players need to be sent off - but the situation would never have occurred if the ref hadn't lost control of events in the first place.