highpeak

A bigger problem, at least for those of us that run around with whistles, is how long before some young player tries it and doesn't quite pull it off "as seen on TV". You are allowed to feint during the run up to the ball, but when your run up is over, you must kick the ball without hesitating or feinting. Calvente clearly does this, and does it very well. Little Joey in the park who stops and then kicks the ball with his "wrong" foot will discover that, if the ref applies the laws correctly, he will be seeing a yellow card, and either the kick will be retaken if the ball went in the goal, or an indirect free kick will be given to the defending team if it didn't. At which point no doubt the coach will have a melt down, parents will go ballistic and a ref will be stuck trying to explain the finer points of law 14, the minor change made to the law at this year's IFAB meeting etc etc.

Meanwhile, in the world of park football. O-30 D3 matches are usually pretty dire, but today's went well. A bit lopsided (7-1), which can lead to problems, but both teams kept their heads, no bad fouls in 90 minutes, a bit of dissent that I thought I dealt with quite well. Player on the losing team is well offside, which is a shame because he would have been through to goal. But that's what law 11 is there for. Well, he couldn't believe how the AR was so misguided and proceeded to let the world know about this. I'm not having my AR treated like that, so, "over here Robbie" (his teammates are all yelling at him, so I get his name). Now Robbie, I don't expect you to agree with the decision, but I do expect you to accept it. Well, in my opinion blah blah blah.... Yes, thanks for your opinion, but I'm going with my AR's opinion. Couple minutes later, when Robbie's calmed down a bit, we're getting in position for a goal kick. Hey Robbie, keep your head in the game, you're one of the best players on your team, so let's keep you on the field, OK? He was a perfect angel the rest of the game. One thing that was a bit weird, was this guy looked a bit like Craig Bellamy, not a lot, but a bit. The right back on the other team though was a dead ringer for Gary Neville. And he could play as well.

Then organise comparison trials with the ACE 3000. http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/ace_det.html

Grass roots football is a small world. I did a couple of state cup matches this weekend, they assign refs from out of town to these matches, so I travelled to a couple of games. First one, the AR is a chap I sent off last weekend. Second match, one of my ARs is a chap I wrote up a couple of seasons ago for a dreadful performance in one of my women's league games. I did have a laugh with one of the other ARs, we both do men's league games. There's a team of mostly Italian blokes, good players, technically very good. Manager is Gigi, a real character. We'd both done their games. They now play in an O-48 division, but they were an O-40 D2 team a year ago. I got their final game of the season, do or die time. "So, Gigi, win today, and you're promoted! You going for it?" "Sure, we go for it!" "Gigi, you really want to be D1? It's pretty tough!" "No, we no wanna be D1" "Well, the league will fine you if you refuse to go up, it's like $250" "I know that. But the second place team will give us $400 if we let them go up" When the match has been crappy and chaps haven't behaved, I always like to think of the good guys you meet in this game and all the laughs we've had.

Technically, all matches played under US Soccer Federation jurisdiction should have three officials, even if you end up using club ARs, which I did on Sunday. The intention is that all O-30 matches and the top two divisions in O-40 have three certified refs, the O-40 third division and O-48 matches just get one. But we don't have enough refs, so it doesn't always work out that way. Oddly enough, the chap who had been assigned as the other AR ended up in the middle of my women's match. I asked him how come he'd turned the morning match down, he said something about not wanting two matches in one day. Then he went on a rant about how the assignor wasn't helping him get a match for an assessment. Umm, if you turn stuff back, you aren't helping yourself, the system allows you to block dates off and you should do that rather than turn games back. I am an assignor and know what a hassle that ends up being. Finding club ARs in the men's league is a nuisance, there's seldom any spectators at these games, managers don't want to do it because it interferes with their work, players won't do it because they'll never get in the match once they have a flag shoved in their hands. They don't trust each other anyway, so it just causes arguments. Isn't reffing fun?

Denying an Obvious Goal Scoring Opportunity. I took a coaching course with this chap, no idea what he was thinking. He'd been involved in a meaningless bit of handbags earlier on that got him and the other player a chewing out. We came out for the second half and I asked him to keep his head in the game, then he gets himself sent off with a stupid "professional" foul. "I just did what I had to do" Yes, maybe you did, now I'm doing what I have to do, bye. I can't remember the last player I sent off, but he had to go. He went without much ado, and his teammates knew it was the right decision, no complaints from them. The one I like, and we don't use it over here, is OFFINABUS (Offensive Insulting Abusive language). Here it's just AL Abusive Language. DOGSO actually just gets written up as DGF.

An interesting day: reffed an O-30 D3 men's match with just one AR which made life a bit tough for positioning in one half of the field. One sent from the field for DOGSO, two yellows for failure to keep their potty mouth under control. A very scrappy 1-1 draw to the extent there was any football played. I spent Saturday morning working with my striker on the O-30 women's team I coach. She doesn't always make the most of one-on-ones with the keeper, and lacks confidence in her ability to play the ball with her left foot. Goal 1: left footed tap-in in a goalmouth scramble following a CK. Goals 2 and 3: just the keeper to beat after a beautiful pass put her through. The third goal was driven home pretty hard for her hat trick. She had those skills anyway, all I did was give her a bit of a confidence boost.

Nugent? A Premiership player? Every time I've seen him he's been completely ineffective. Way out of his depth.

Now there's a phrase you don't often see: "the beauty of the play off system" Got to like a system that promotes teams that finish 6th.

He then got fed up of surgery and went to tech school to become a mechanic. He got a very good grade on his final. The instructor said the engine rebuild was only average, but he'd never seen anyone do it all through the exhaust system.

I liked the Brazilian riot police clip, it got a qood response on a ref message board I frequent. The Sunday morning comedy leagues don't start up again for a couple of weeks since the weather in Connecticut isn't that reliable in March, but we had a postponed match today, should have been played last October but we had a very wet autumn season. So it was off to the seaside, a pitch where the wind whips in off the Long Island Sound. A fair few players seem to have decided that a warm bed held more attraction than a football match, so it was 8v9 for most of the match. Made my life as AR-1 easy since there were no substitutions to manage. A chilly start to the season, but it was still good to get out on a field, run up and down and wave a flag around. Three penalty kicks in the match, all good decisions, only one resulted in a goal. I was left reflecting on the stick we get when we get it wrong, but our errors are few compared to those committed by the players.

The way we're playing these days I don't think it really would have been much of an upset. As far as the "upset" at Old Trafford goes, as a Derby fan I have to say I am not sharing any glee. Anybody but those cheating b***ards from L##ds. Isn't football great, thirty odd years on and irrational hatreds live on.

If you read the laws of the game you will find that the word "intentional" does not get mentioned in Law 12. Referees look at actions and outcomes. Players have to challenge for the ball with care. If your elbow smacks somebody hard in the face and endangers the safety of an opponent, you run the risk of being sent off. Whether you need to be putting your elbows out to gain height has nothing to do with it, the presence of an opponent means you need to be more careful. The only difference getting or playing for the ball makes most of the time is whether it gets written up as Serious Foul Play or Violent Conduct.

In fairness to the FA, players and clubs are fully aware of what the appeals process involves and ought to know that an appeal that really has no basis for success carries the potential for an increase in the suspension. I think this was introduced to discourage teams from lodging appeals so that players would be available for an upcoming match, deferring the suspension till later. From what I've been able to read, Turner was sent off for serious foul play after elbowing an opponent. I'm not sure whether it was last year or the year before, but refs were told to watch for the use of elbows and clamp down. The elbow is a dangerous weapon when you think about it. I am not sure how much coaches and players were told about this, but I can hardly believe the word didn't at least reach the higher level professional game. So presumably the referee saw Turner's elbow hit the opponent in the face, decided it was Serious Foul Play, worth a red card, end of story. About the only way you'd succeed with an appeal would be to produce video showing either no or minimal contact with the opponent or that it was some other player that should have been penalised. Appealing because you agree there was contact but didn't think it was a red (i.e., I disagree with the ref's decision on a matter of fact affecting play), and that's what the manager more or less said, is not very solid grounds for an appeal. You can see the guidelines here: http://www.thefa.com/TheFA/Disciplinary/~/media/Files/PDF/TheFA/DisciplinaryProcedures08091.ashx

You'd love US High School soccer then. For reasons that have never been clear to me, HS has its own set of rules. For a while I maintained a dual certification because the money is pretty good for doing HS, but the rule differences and the mechanics involved (HS uses the thoroughly discredited dual system of refereeing, two refs with whistles, no ARs) became too much to stomach and I packed it in to concentrate on proper football. Anyway, HS matches are governed by a stadium clock (where there is one, otherwise we're back to the watch on my wrist) which stops in a very perverse manner as follows: injuries (OK, that's the same as FIFA), a goal being scored, a penalty being awarded, a player being booked or sent off, or as directed by the referee. Substitutions, it keeps running. I remember observing a match where a free kick was awarded with very little time remaining. The kicking team asked the ref to manage the wall, which was maybe 8 yards away. The ref duly did so, blew his whistle for the kick, and the stadium clock ran to zero, so the other ref blew his whistle to end the match. Everybody was decidedly annoyed at this fiasco, even the parents of the team that had just had a let-off. They thought it was a pretty stupid way to end the match. If I haven't fallen asleep while watching, I can usually predict how much time will be added on, so it really shouldn't come as that much of a surprise to people. Timekeeping is best thought of as like chopping up wood with a chainsaw. It'll be roughly accurate, but don't go bringing out the dial calipers.

Here's another thing in football that isn't really broken but folks still want to fix it. But for the sake of argument, let's suppose we do what you suggest. The whistle will blow when that clock hits 45 minutes for the half. Precise. No arguments. When it chalks off an almost certain goal for Chelsea or whichever of the overpaid teams you support, you and your prima donna manager will be OK with that? No complaining, right? The clock said time was up, so we're following the Clive Thomas school of refereeing and timekeeping, and the game is over. Tough cheddar and all that. Let's leave it alone, it seems to work fine and I don't think ManUre or any other team have really gained from it. I'd suggest those last gasp goals stem more from one team having an edge over the other in concentration and determination than anything else.

I love the way the structures dominate the trains and so clearly establish the location. It may not be an exact replica of Peak Forest, but the Small Dale crusher fixes the locale as well as if it had been. Brilliant! I watched this thread on the old forum, thanks so much for posting those pictures.

What a great little model! It may not be the last word in detail and so on, but it has a real charm to it. And for that price, well.... Thanks for sharing that.

I think if you could photoshop the first 'e' out of Freightliner you'd pretty much sum it up.

Um, I'm not sure how on earth you do that, especially if you have an AR to help you out on ball out of play decisions. I've reffed on plenty of fields where the lines were somewhat sketchy, my instructions to the AR are to sight down the line to the corner flag and make the call on whether or not the ball has left the field. It can be hard enough depending on the angle of the sun to make that decision when the lines are fairly distinct. The league I ref in turned away a protest recently where there were no corner flags. The AR and the CR both indicated the restart would be a throw-in, the team in possession took a CK and scored, the CR then allowed the goal. The league decided not to hear the protest because they have a rule that if you are going to protest a match based on field conditions, you have to do it in writing before the kick-off. I felt that the lack of a corner flag had nothing much to do with the protest, it was a case of an incorrect restart that could have happened whether corner flags were in place or not. I have to say what some refs do beggars belief, I really hope I'm not that bad. Just in case, I take my personal assessor with me for feedback

"LATICS IN 10 GOAL THRILLER!"

I think we're a little overconfident in our belief that there is a technological fix for this kind of thing. The smart ball technology that Adidas/Cairos promised would eliminate uncertainty as to whether the ball had passed over the goalline turned out to be lacking when it was actually put to the test, and useful as video can be, it isn't going to be conclusive. Ponder this. We've allowed video replay, and we've given managers the right to challenge a certain number of decisions in a match. In the final minute of a World Cup match, the referee awards a penalty kick. The team against whom the penalty has been awarded protests, and all the video available at the time reveals no infraction, so the 5th official in charge of video review directs the referee to change the restart, probably to a dropped ball. And then the next day, footage that wasn't available at the time reveals this http://gfx.dagbladet.no/pub/artikkel/5/53/538/538729/flo320_1213955673.jpg Now what do you do? 1998 World Cup, Brazil v Norway, referee Esse Baharmast, vilified around the world until that picture showed up and confirmed what he knew he'd seen. It's all about the angle of view, and you can have all the cameras you want, if there isn't one with the right angle, it won't do you much good. The experiment with additional goalline referees is perhaps a better way to go. The decision in the Ireland match was always going to be the AR's to make, unless the CR was in a decidedly unorthodox position, but it takes an outstanding AR to be able to get into the right position to make the decision, and a slice of fortune that his view won't be blocked by the movement of other players. The goalline referee would have the best chance at making the decision in that particular incident. Now, I'll grant you that video does reveal a lot that goes unnoticed, and I would like to see post-match review for things like diving and the Hand of the Cheat. All these incidents are bringing the game into disrepute, and that's what I'd charge the likes of Henry (who certainly has previous) with. Granted, France would still be going to the World Cup, but maybe M. Henry wouldn't.

This won't, I realise, make me any friends, but it is worth considering that had Ireland taken their chances better, we wouldn't be discussing the referees, Thierry Henry, how apparently biased FIFA is (Michel Platini is president of UEFA, not FIFA) and so on. It's generally easier to blame others, referees in particular, for our misfortunes than reflect upon our own shortcomings. Were Ireland hard done by? There is a strong case for that, both in the way the play-offs were organised and in respect of a particular event in the match, but they still had control of their own destiny.

There's actually one governing body, the Scottish FA, the other entities are organisers of a competition. I'll agree that with the money and status involved, the SPL might appear to be on a par with the SFA but the SFA actually has the authority to govern football in Scotland if it so chooses, just as the FA could have done us all a favour and told the big clubs to get lost with their idea of a Premier league. I know your plan doesn't call for a single national team, but as far as I can see the only way FIFA would sanction the league set-up you propose would be as part of a merger of the individual governing bodies. The way the international governance of the game evolved was quite haphazard. First was the FA, formed to unify football in England. Scotland, Ireland and Wales followed suit. In the 1880s the four associations recognised the need for some further unification of laws and procedures and formed the International Football Association Board. FIFA didn't arrive on the scene until 1904, decided to use IFAB's laws as a worldwide code, joined IFAB, got kicked off and then readmitted and eventually came to the current situation where they have four votes, the four FAs have one apiece and you need 6 votes to change anything. So FIFA more or less rules, but the British FAs can play spoiler if they so choose. I am sure FIFA would love to have a freer hand there! Septic Bladder (50 ideas a day, 51 of them bad) is best confined to deciding what should be on the lunch menu, not having any say of substance in matters affecting the game. (IFAB kicked FIFA out because FIFA wanted a cut of gate receipts from international matches. As the home championship (remember that?) was a very lucrative competition, the British FAs were having none of it and handed FIFA (who only had one vote at the time) their hat and coat. FIFA was readmitted when they agreed to exclude the home championship matches from their take. The IFAB minutes are quite amusing, there's no reason given when FIFA is booted off, the motion simply says that IFAB shall be made up of the four FAs. You have to read the minutes from when FIFA is allowed back in to see why they were excluded.)

What you are talking about quickly gets very complicated. You would, in essence, be dissolving three national governing bodies and replacing them with one, we'll call it Football UK. Or maybe not. FIFA would probably like it as they could get rid of the present International FA Board and stop having to go to places like Llandudno in February for their annual meetings. The national FAs wouldn't like it for pretty much the same sort of reason. Whether the resulting national team and league would be stronger or weaker than it was before is open to debate, but it would have some impact on the club sides who compete in Europe, since seeding depends to some degree on the rankings of national teams and leagues. The Scottish teams wishing to join the Premier league would probably not compete in Europe very often, so any benefit they could have gained from the merger would be moot. The Scottish league is ranked 13th, the English league 1st; the Scottish national team is 23rd, the English national team is 7th. These rankings count as 33% of a club's coefficient, the other two thirds is the club's own performance in European competition, no Scottish team is in the top 20 at the moment. The English teams would presumably see their rankings decline for a while depending on how coefficients were recalculated as a result of the merger, so they wouldn't like it much. A hermetically sealed Premier league is the American sports business model and no doubt appeals to many teams who have a constant struggle to keep their snouts in the trough. Since the FA opened the door to this sort of thing when they permitted the formation of the Premier league, they'd probably go along with that kind of change, absent some significant injection of testicular growth hormone. For me, the Premier league is becoming increasingly sterile, so you may as well seal it off and resume a more normal contest outside the Money League.