Rhode Island State Referee Committee

Referees shall transmit a written report of the alleged assault or abuse, or both, within 48 hours of the incident (unless there is a valid reason for later reporting) to the designee of the Organization Member and the State Referee Administrator. For tournaments or special events, the referee shall transmit a written report to the tournament director on the day of the incident and to his home state SRA within 10 days of the incident.

Be sure to call the SRA on the same day that the incident occurs so we can begin the process immediately and review the steps that need to be taken.

The SRC will hold a spring academy session beginning on June 3 and ending on June 17. The sessions will be held at Wilson Park in North Kingstown in conjunction with adult games that will be held there. Referees 16-21 are encouraged to attend. Any referee interested in adult assignments is encouraged to attend. Referees will work for limited durations during the Sunday matches. Pre-game and game situations will be reviewed with a different mentor weekly. Registration is online at gameofficials.net.

Pedro Proença’s final appointment, which was already communicated on Sunday, has unfolded to be true. He will head an all Iberian team of seven match officials including the Spanish ELITE referee Carlos Velasco Carballo from Spain.

The SRC is pleased to pass on this special message from Kabba Joof, Head Coach of the Rhode Island Reds.

We’re the newest member of the National Premier Soccer League, and we’ve just kicked off our season playing in the Northeast-Atlantic Conference of the league.

We play teams including Mass United, the Brooklyn Italians, the New York Athletic Club, and even a New York Red Bulls team.

Our team includes collegiate players from top programs, including Providence College, URI, and Bryant University. We also have top amateurs from all over the world, and they’re all dedicated to making this team a success.

This year we have seven home games, and we’d love to have your group be a part of it.

Our home field is Cranston Stadium, and we want to see you there!

For this upcoming game against FC New York, you can print this message and present it at the box office to save $2 off the price of a $7 admission.

So print it out, and print up our home calendar, and I’ll see you Friday night!

-Kabba

In the event that you need a volunteer for your match because there are not enough referees, * Club linesmen (not registered as Federation Referees) are limited to calling in and out of bounds only.

If all of us understood that referees are human beings who make mistakes and have feelings like everybody else, plus that coaches and spectators are role models for their own children, so many of the discipline problems associated with youth soccer would go away. And your league’s Arbitration Committee would be about as busy as the Maytag repairman.
     
My Soccer America column in August 2010 was on how referees control the coaches who need to be controlled. Coaches only have the ability, per the Laws of the Game, to give tactical instruction from the technical area and that is it. It goes on to state that coaches “must behave in a responsible manner.” Certainly, for a ref to allow a coach to give a running criticism of the officiating hurts game control. Allowing constant criticism from a coach (or anybody else) contributes to an environment in which the players stop playing soccer and begin to focus on what the ref is whistling, which leads to more robust challenges and more vocal dissent.

I have also learned that referees who control problem coaches have a much easier time with that same coach should their paths ever cross again as the coach knows that he or she will not be allowed to dissent much at all.

Coaches are part of the equation of touchline abuse but what about abuse from the spectators? Many spectators have absolutely no idea what the rules say, especially in youth soccer, and the only soccer games that they have ever seen are their son’s or daughter’s. The great majority of problems with parents are avoided by officials who hustle, smile, are approachable, get calls correct plus briefly explain decisions that need to be explained.

Over the course of an officiating career, a referee will come across that rare human being who has very little experience with the game yet thinks he or she is an authority on the rules and does not respect the ref’s decisions or whatever brief explanation the ref may give. Just smile and move on.

But what if that spectator continues to yell? Once the ref figures out which team the spectator is rooting for, he or she could seek that coach’s help to control the spectator. Many youth leagues now require that the coach control unruly spectators. When a coach has been instructed by the referee to quiet the team’s parents, the coach can send over an assistant to deliver the message or be forced to deal with the parents while the game is stopped. 

If the spectator(s) continue the poor conduct, the coach receives a yellow card (should the league want coaches to be shown the actual card) and later a red card if the poor conduct continues. Before it gets to that point, the ref explains to the coach that the game could be terminated if the conduct persists. Should the poor conduct persist, the referee terminates the game and files a report. 

The referee should not confront the spectator as this will only add fuel to the fire. Thankfully, spectator behavior rarely gets to that level. I can only recall abandoning one of my games because of poor spectator behavior.

The league might have adopted a Zero Tolerance policy, which governs the behavior of coaches and spectators toward game officials. It is imperative for the ref to know if a Zero Tolerance Policy is in force for the game and how that league interprets zero tolerance.

Yes, some people take youth soccer way too seriously and one unfortunate consequence of this verbal abuse leads to the referees remaining often being overworked on weekends. I started refereeing when I was 16 years old and obviously stuck with it. But it struck me as odd when some adults 2-3 times my age at that time showed less maturity at a soccer game than the players a few years younger than me. I still see this lack of maturity in some of the adults today.

As Jim Tunney, who officiated in the NFL for 31 years, once stated, “My definition of a spectator is a person who yells at me for missing a subtle hold in the interior line and, after the game, cannot find his car in the parking lot.”

(Randy Vogt has officiated over 8,000 games during the past three decades, from professional matches in front of thousands to 6-year-olds being cheered on by very enthusiastic parents. In Preventive Officiating, he shares his wisdom gleaned from thousands of games and hundreds of clinics to help referees not only survive but thrive on the soccer field. You can visit the book’s website at www.preventiveofficiating.com/)