Should I Have Given Red? Referee Match Day Vlog #20

The penalty should have been retaking because the keeper came off his line

Most refs in that league say not to raise the flag until he has touched the ball, unless its really obvious, which is what i used to do when running the line for GNSL clubs. Correct call though.

Really enjoy your channel. Just a question - I was a Div 1A University referee in the USA many years ago (National Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association). What would that correspond to for refereeing in England?

Theres a reason why you "play till the whistle!"

12:36 on further examination a yellow is warranted. The player hit the ball first in the sliding tackle before the contact with the leg. If the player missed the ball, a red would've come out.

I think it's time to upgrade to a Molten Dolphin Valkeen mate their are so elite trust me i got 2 1 main 1 backup. (Whistle BTW).

looking at the challenge that you thought was a red, I would say your gut instinct was correct. the only reason stud marks would be high up his leg was due to him sliding in on the floor. so good call. Also great call for the offside/penalty decision.

First yellow is harsh, and certainly never a red - the lad who slid in ended up where his opponent is naturally about to place his foot - if refs start giving reds for things like that then you inherently force players to risk injuring themselves attempting to avoid contact in a contact sport. Not only that, its a 50/50 with the ball there to be won and the fact he ended up standing on the guys leg is a combination result of attempting to toe-poke the ball away and the sliding player's momentum. This is one of my biggest bug bears with top level refs - sheer lack of understanding of basic physics (red cards for follow-through contact when a defender clears it for example) - it's a contact sport and this is why shin pads are mandatory.

Thank you for fixing that door handle 😭😭

Love the content. As a player at the latter end of his playing days, this is giving me a good insight into what it is like to stay in the game and become a referee.

I would love to see you analyse other referee’s performances too. Take Simon Hooper’s performance for the Newcastle vs Liverpool game last night. There were so many decisions he had to make. Gordon sending off, konate push on barnes, penalty shouts, should Bruno have been sent off too? Would love to hear your opinion.

The ability to front up and say that your efforts had some errors is refreshing. Well Done. All of us don't always get it right... We learn for the next time.

Had to find this video for ya.... For that foot stomp at 10:50 of your video... Here's a MLS match from the VAR booth. It's at 6:20 of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuSvfI_NMqU&t=430s

In this video, the ref gives a yellow on the field for an even worse foot stamp and didn't change it to red until he was able to see it again via VAR. I see a lot of Pro refs give yellows on the field for this type of contact, so you are making the exact same calls as professional refs on the field. It isn't until they see the review from VAR that they decide it should be red. So, your decision making on the field and then when analyzing the game afterward, is very similar to professional refs.

That looked like a tougher game to ref! Really liked the :"seriousness" sound of your whistle when the player came together at the end - very firm. The offside call. I agree with you on the laws of the game. The part that I thought about, is what you talk about -- safe refereeing. The player who was offside, was stationary when the ball was passed, then started running towards the ball, the AR's flag went up as he was stopping his run toward the ball. His run toward the ball made the AR raise his flag and the defenders stopped running -- even though they shouldn't. I think safe refereeing might be to go with the AR's offside flag and say he was initially started to run toward the ball after the pass was made as this impacted play and the AR to raise his flag. I think you were right in your interpretations of the letter of the law, but also I think a case could be made that his run toward the ball impacted the play. Luckily, whatever decision is correct, didn't impact the game as the penalty was saved.

Can I ask a question about the 8 second GK holding the ball rule. Is this only in the higher leagues, e.g. Prem - League 2, or are all leagues meant to obey this new rule. I'm not fully understanding what this 8 second rule does, but watching a few matches in national league south, some keepers get 12/15 seconds to hold the ball before distributing it. If you can help, I'd be greatly appreciative as I'm probably missing something. :) I enjoy your videos, keep them up

@11:05 is the yellow / red card on white or blue player. Id assume white as he was the one who stepped on blue? Or blue as he slid tripped white?

#4 blue in the first half comes in 2 footed very recklessly, then gets hurt himself as the white player is slightly late. Who is more at fault? Red for white would have been extremely harsh. That's probably why the blue players didn't demand more?

I agree with the points made by @GregMcNeish and I think you're being a bit harsh on yourself. The only questionable decision was the possible red card. It's difficult to see in real time, but as you slowed it down and froze it you can see that both of the white player's feet left the ground. This can be considered excessive force, but like you said, nobody else spotted that either.

PK no doubt about it. Play to the whistle. I always tell the players pre game. Play to the whistle. Don’t assume anything

I also run pocket cards + notebook cards. I feel that it helps with managing the players when it's needed. Quickly carding reckless challenges that have a chance to boil over cannot be understated.

I also will do quick cautions for delaying the restart in youth tournament conditions where no added time is allowed due to the back-to-back scheduling of matches. If a player is delaying because they know time is running out and I won't be able to extend it, a quick yellow and telling them to get on with it usually solves the problem.

On the offside/penalty - play the whistle is rule #1 from all levels of football. Good call from you.

Love how you say lad 😂😂 good reffing today mate

11:19 I'm sure the lack of reaction is because the sliding player has come in so fast that the player just didn't have time to plan where he puts his foot. He's gone from thinking he's racing for the ball to making late contact. If he'd got his own feet to ground then the free kick goes the other way despite losing the race to the ball.

Now you might have seen a carelessness that we couldn't see from the reverse angle.

11:17 On close things being harder to "see": being closer means that everything is moving faster relative to your field of view. Also, a greater portion of what you want to see to make a judgement is in your peripheral vision instead of your central vision. So it makes quite a bit of sense.

Thanks for adding the door handle….I actually saw you did it in the last video….my OCD will allow me to sleep now 😂😂

7:16 I have been trying different spots over the past year. There seem to be pluses and minuses to each. Being dead in the middle seems to put me in the middle of play. However, I can react and move in plenty of time. I see the point you have made.
11:29 I was OK with a hello from my visual point of view. Don’t think you should change your mind based on some showing you stud marks,
16:57 agree on the yellow
17:20 agree on consistency and the chat
21:37 you are hard on yourself which is understandable as you work to improve. Always important to work hard but also work smart. Sometimes play will just make it impossible to keep up. You have talked about positioning a lot. I think it is a combination of the two. Being in a good position will help even when far away from play.
22:53 love these situations…. It is always a challenge keeping track of who needs to be disciplined, etc. when there are that many and it is just you! Well done.

Three points I'd like to touch upon:

1.) Regarding the offside no-call, I think this was the correct application of the Laws. He didn't make a play on or challenge for the ball, so all of those considerations are off the table. The only thing that could potentially cause an offside offence would be if the player being in an offside position impacted the defenders' ability to play the ball. The defenders stopped running, but they were perfectly ABLE to keep going. A scenario where this would come into play is if the goalkeeper set up to defend against a potential pass to that offside player, and as a result was out of position for the shot. Or on a ball played over the top, if a defender clears the ball out of bounds because the offside player is moving in to potentially challenge for it. The important factor is that a defender acts in a certain way because they are reacting to the offside player as if they AREN'T offside. In this case, it's the exact opposite. They stopped because they thought the offside was a done deal. Children are taught to keep playing until they hear the whistle. These guys didn't.

2.) About the yellow/red card question, I've never held to the notion that the specific point of contact is a major factor in whether a tackle is a reckless or whether it's serious foul play. Obviously, if they're taking a shot at someone's head, that's different. But what does it matter if a tackle where someone comes in with the cleats grazes someone's shin pad or goes into someone's calf. The tackle was the same, regardless of that hair-splitting of the result. If it wasn't excessive force, then it was reckless. Plain and simple.

3.) Taking field conditions into consideration (not just the turf & goal net, but facility conditions like a net behind the goal or an easier place to retrieve missed shots) is precisely what the first point of the Law you quoted is talking about. You are to flip a coin to determine the goal used for the shootout "unless there are other considerations". Those are other considerations, so it is NOT improper to simply choose a goal in this situation, especially if the teams agree. The Laws support what you did here; you don't need to change what you're doing on fields like this where the conditions at either end are not equal.

Good game!

16:02 I would say you were right

As usual a solid performance. Based on your intro I was expecting a less than solid performance. Two things from me. If you followed your advice that you carried out in the first half about goal kick positioning you would have been better positioned for that 1 on 1 late in the game. The only other thing, on the foul late in the game that started to lead to the potential Mass Con, if you think that’s a possibility, consider sprinting to the players while blowing the whistle and get closer to flash point to have a closer presence. I like that as things heated up afterwards, you stood back to observe. Don’t get involved physically. Great work!

Did you have your shirt tucked in?

The higher up the levels you go you'll start getting pulled up for this.

You don’t have assistants in cup games?

What an incredibly tough game.

Do you ever give a long blow on the whistle? The near mass brawl made me think it as you gave a number of short blasts which didn't seem effective.

On it's own that 1st yellow was a yellow. Sure it was certainly a poor tackle. A red would have changed the rest of the game, which in hindsight might have been a good outcome. The blue's weren't shy at sliding! Who'd be a referee?!!

Oo that penalty with the offside. I was prepared to disagree for a change, but your talk through convinced me.

That lad in blue tackling the restart near the end was dumb as! Shame he couldn't have been sent off for that. Gutted the blues won.

12:36 wouldnt be red for me. The blue actually went into the tackle himself recklessly, and easily could have hurt the opponent as well.

Vice Nideo, Eric!

One thing re notes at pens - you need to record everyone who takes a kick, not just those who score. That way you avoid someone taking a second kick before everyone else has kicked. You may well have done that anyway, but useful for an newbies to be aware. I ask the teams to have each kicker turn and let me see their number before getting to the penalty area (albeit I regularly have to ask again!).

For the offside decision, why are your club linesmen doing anything other than calling ball in and out of play?

Re that quick free kick, you had a ‘get out of jail free card’, as they took it 5, 6, or 7 yards further forward, so you could easily have brought it back AND dealt with the injured player.

Here is my opinion of the offside decision. (Leaving out the club assistant and the defenders stopping)

By making the run towards the ball (playing the ball) he is also drawing the defender towards him, and not the ball. This could be considered impacting the defender's movement and/or ability to play the ball.

If higher level referees/assessors want to disagree, that is fine. However, this is still hard to get right in real time.

If the players, teams and leagues want better decisions, perhaps make it easier on referees and pay for qualified assistants.

No assistants at this stage of the competition is presumably a marker of how difficult it is to get officials these days. Back in the day this competition was a great way of picking off some nice grounds in North Gloucestershire very early in the season, and I'm sure there were assistants (probably linesmen then!) even in the early rounds.

Hind sight is 20/20, especially with video review.
For what my opinion is worth, I agree with your assessment and thought process for the yellow/red. Initially, I thought the same, a slight stamp on the foot (yellow). If he did come across the ankle area of the second leg, that could be a leg breaker (it doesn't taie much force down there). I would have no problem with a red for SFP.

By the way, I just discovered your channel a few weeks ago. Love your presentation and how you critique your performance!

Some teams and players purposely make it hard to referee.

How do you find the new puma kit? Is the fit similar to the Nike kit?

The 'offside' incident is one of the reasons I have no time at all for these people who make the rules/laws or whatever they call them. As a referee I absolutely see your point of view in giving the decision but as a coach/spectator I think they have a legitimate claim for the offside positioned player making movements towards the ball as it effects the movements of the opposition defenders. The PIG initiative 'Plays' 'Interferes' or 'Gains an advantage' makes me have absolute sympathy to both points of view. I think 'Interference' could be claimed by the defenders by the way the offside attacker makes a movement towards the ball and it could be argued its a feint or dummy and does cause the defenders to act differently. These decisions are fine for the professional game but are an absolute nightmare at grassroots.

Even slowing the video down, a couple of the decisions were still tough to call. Proof that refereeing is not easy!!! I personally thought the off-side should have been given as their forward did make a move towards the ball, which the defender would have seen but I can see why you didn't give it.

I carry 2 whistles attached by a loop, a Fox 40 and a mini Fox 40. I then have a second set in my pocket with a Tornado and mini Fox 40 in case I drop the other set or need a change in tone. I carry my yellow in my front left pocket and my red in my back right pocket. They are write-on cards.

Completely jealous of the locker rooms you get.

Ah haven't thought of bringing a second yellow card. Maybe I will try that. I am also experimenting with stuff in the pre season, like electric whistles. It's very quick to do, just press a button no need to put it on your mouth and blow. Also you can point it at someone and blow their heads off if they are getting confrontational😂. Downside it is very bulky compared to a conventional whistle.