Official addressing players not Coach

[Todd_conners]

I had a situation this weekend where we got beat handily during our second game of a double header. The penalties were one sided 14 for my boys and 2 to our opponent. A parent of one of my players informed me that one of the officials approached my "D" and told them that they "play dirty" and that if they didn't stop, he was going to disqualify the whole team. I believe the official should have approached me with his concerns and I would have taken care of the situations that he was observing. I take offense to this generalization of my team, because that is not what I teach my kids. If my kids are being ****s, they are done. Period. I think the officials made a decision about my team and that affected the way they called the game. Their observations of my team was innacurate. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Snake~eyes]

Its hard for us to comment since we weren't there.

There have been some situations where I have told the player(s) they need to cool, some where I've told just the coach and some where I've told both.

Maybe your players were playing dirty, maybe they weren't.

I don't really know what you want us to tell you.

[CoachRob]

In games where it is getting out of hand, refs can call an officials's TO, and address both coaches about what they are seeing. But as Snake said, we weren't there and can only speculate. Perhaps some of your players had bad blood with this team, unknown to you, and that came into play. I don't teach my players to slash or spear or commit UR, but they do at times. They're kids and who knows what they're thinking. But 14 time-serving penalties seems like an awful lot in my limited experience. Were any USC's? I would think if the ref "had it out" for your boys, he would have hit a few with a USC.

[michaeldwilson]

Three things.

1) You will get bad refs. This isn't a perfect world. I heard from one coach that the refs they had in one of his club games did not know the concept of the slow whistle.

2) If you are part of a league, you can tell the league office so that the league can get you different refs in future games, or the refs will work harder at being fairer, or the refs will get really mad and you fouls will be 20 - 2 next time.

3) Remember you heard this third hand. As you look back on the game in the cold light of the work week, were the calls fair? Did you see a lot of fouls that should not have been called on your guys, or fouls on the other team that weren't called?

Mike

[stegmakk]

I have heard refs tell specific players to watch it or cool down etc...
But to tell the whole D what allegedly was said is just bad...If he had a problem with the D or team as a whole, yes he should have talked to you...but as Mike said above...consider where this came from