"You've got talent and elegance"

Today, I was assistant referee for two games. The first game was a U14 wich went very smooth with nothing to talk about.
The second one (U16), I was working with the referee's boss. The first half went very well until a second before half time. I flaged for a throw in and the player of wich the throw in went against, looked at me and said: "How can it be for them, he touched it. (3 seconds pause.) You fucking pine." First of all, I don't have the slightest clue on earth of what is a pine, so couldn't bring it down to OFFINABUS (Offensive, insulting, abusive) language. The word fucking should have helped me guess that it was abusive, but I didn't take any action, just gave him the dirtiest look he might ever get. At half-time I was talking with the ref and he complimented me on my flag-handeling, aswell as our visual communication. He told me I had alot of talent and was elegant when signalling. The second half was a bit more difficult than the first as the play became a bit rougher and the tackles were flying in. The ref gave two yellows and did well to keep that count low. The first booking was for a foul wich he played advantage and booked the player a good 3 minutes after the original offence. The second for dissent.
Overall a good day for me and was happy to be able to find some time to referee. Hope I can build on this performance and become better and better.

Squeezing through

As I am into my exams I had very little time to write on my blog. Since my last post, 1 may, I managed to squeeze in 4 games as linesman. The four games were very easy and controversy free, except a strange incident during the fourth game. I was on the opposite side to the dugouts, so in front of the spectators. There was one person following me up and down and everytime I waved my flag for a decision, threw me a volley of abuse. It was strange because no-one ever complained about one of my decisions so it was relatively quiet, except for the guy who passed the whole game abusing and criticising my decisions. Strange...yes but not surprising.

Also during my third game I was on the spectators side and heared a very amusing comment by one of the parents. They spoke in french but I'll translate it. (The names are fictive as I don't know the people.) The critics were directed to the central referee.

Mike : Ref come on, wake up, you've missed yet another straightforward call.
Paul : (To Mike) Ok , calm down, it's only a game.
Mike : Yeah but I hate these refs from here, when we're at home, they call them against us and when we're away, the refs are against us again.
Paul: Well, if there's no refs than there's nothing to rant about, so don't get these refs fed up otherwise you'll have to find something else to rant about every Sunday morning.

Well said ;) !

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