lehighvalleylax
04-25-2006, 11:19 AM
Prelude to situation:
3 man Varsity game with a first year referee and two experienced (although one not good) refs. Beginner ref making questionable calls including calling an illegal body check because "he was over 5 yards away from the ball" and very apprehensive to make calls. Seemed to be easily swayed by the players and coaches.
Late in the 3rd of a close game and a pushing match happens on the far side of the field around the midfield line. The Lead and Rabbit blow the whistles and try to difuse the situation and this new ref is the trail and by the benches and OF COURSE doesn't realize he must hold the benches. He is staring directly at the scrum as a player from red starts to run from his bench. As asst. coach, I am holding my team/players at the bench and yell to the ref, "He's leaving the bench". The ref has no idea what is going on. The red team player gets well past the wing line before he kind of stops and heads back to his bench, the whole time I am still trying to point this out to the ref. All three refs confer and assign 2 minute unnecessary roughness penalties to the two in the scrum and give the player who left the bench a 1 minute USC??? We ask why not a 3 min ejection and the other team's head coach talks to the referee. After the talk, the referee wipes off the 1 minute USC because "the head coach told me it was not the kid's intent to leave the bench, he was just subbing. And I know both these coaches and I have no reason to believe either would lie to me. To penalize him this severely would be unfair because he didn' mean to." ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
My opinion: 3 minute NR - Ejection He left the bench. Case closed.
Game was way out of hand. Although I commend the one referee for calling an Unnesessary roughness on what was definitely a clean hit but would have made the game go worse.
3 man Varsity game with a first year referee and two experienced (although one not good) refs. Beginner ref making questionable calls including calling an illegal body check because "he was over 5 yards away from the ball" and very apprehensive to make calls. Seemed to be easily swayed by the players and coaches.
Late in the 3rd of a close game and a pushing match happens on the far side of the field around the midfield line. The Lead and Rabbit blow the whistles and try to difuse the situation and this new ref is the trail and by the benches and OF COURSE doesn't realize he must hold the benches. He is staring directly at the scrum as a player from red starts to run from his bench. As asst. coach, I am holding my team/players at the bench and yell to the ref, "He's leaving the bench". The ref has no idea what is going on. The red team player gets well past the wing line before he kind of stops and heads back to his bench, the whole time I am still trying to point this out to the ref. All three refs confer and assign 2 minute unnecessary roughness penalties to the two in the scrum and give the player who left the bench a 1 minute USC??? We ask why not a 3 min ejection and the other team's head coach talks to the referee. After the talk, the referee wipes off the 1 minute USC because "the head coach told me it was not the kid's intent to leave the bench, he was just subbing. And I know both these coaches and I have no reason to believe either would lie to me. To penalize him this severely would be unfair because he didn' mean to." ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
My opinion: 3 minute NR - Ejection He left the bench. Case closed.
Game was way out of hand. Although I commend the one referee for calling an Unnesessary roughness on what was definitely a clean hit but would have made the game go worse.