We are on our way to having the driest March in Denver "history." That means two things. One: No problems with games being cancelled due to weather. Two: Mother Nature will get us in April or May. :)
Our President's Cup (Boys U14+) kicked off this past weekend. After many changes from our Assignor, I ended up with one U17 CR and one U17 A/R.
Start with the A/R game (my 2nd). One coach came up to us and told us "we are running an offside trap. I support the referees, but yesterday they blew 2 calls which lead to 2 goals...please watch for it." OK coach. So in the 1st half I was on their defense side which meant I got to watch for the trap. I'm not a coach, but I have now concluded that the Offside Trap is a bad idea when it is the foundation of your defensive strategy. You are now making me, the A/R, part of your defense, as opposed to my true role which is to provide information to my CR, first and foremost monitoring for an offside violation. The opposing team took 10 minutes to unlock the defense. First they discovered the defense was struggling with diagonal runs. Then they discovered the defense didn't have the speed to recover. Third they discovered that the A/R sometimes misses a call - I think I missed one offside call that lead to a goal, but my other calls were spot on. Finally, they discovered they could just beat the defense dribbling. An offside trap when run on occasion can be an effective strategy. What I've seen in sub-elite youth levels is that the defense is trying so hard to execute the trap that when they fail they rarely get back in defensive shape. So even if the attack slows, their shape is terrible, and a good possession team will score over and over again. Which happened as the final was 9-1 in favor of the non-trapping team.
My other game I was a CR between 2 teams one of which was 100% Hispanic, the other was 50% Hispanic They play a different style game - generally more possession and subtly more physical (lots of trivial contact). I did issue 2 yellow cards. My senior AR thought I did a great job not falling for, well, flops, and managing the physicalness (even though there of course were complaints). Otherwise, the other thing of note is I had my first parent ejection! At the end of the first half, my junior AR came over and told me a parent was riding him over and over again for his offside calls (or non calls). Wanted the parent removed. And so I did. The parent tried to come back during the 2nd half, but I stood my ground and pointed out the state representatives that would be happy to discuss the situation further with him. That not only shut him up but resulted in him apologizing profusely to me "I didn't understand what you meant, so sorry, blah blah blah. " He did indeed moved 100 yds away and stayed there the rest of the game.
Until next time.
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