Question Number: 19479

Mechanics 6/22/2008

RE: rec Adult

Chris of Halifax, NS Canada asks...

In the Netherlands/Russia game yesterday, ref blows for a foul on a Dutch attacker who has fallen just outside the box on the left and and proceeds to show a yellow to the Russian defender. Before he writes it in his book, his attention is drawn to the AR on the far side, he consults and awards a goal kick - apparently the ball had gone out of play over the goal line prior to the foul. However, the yellow was not followed up, it was that player's 2nd yellow in the game so he would have been off. Since the AR was too far away, I don't think he could have corrected the closer ref's call on the foul. So the question - if the ball was not in play at the time of the foul should the yellow still stand? would it depend whether the call was for a reckless foul or just USB for preventing an attack by a foul?
In the end it seemed it all turned out for the best -slo-mo replay showed barely any contact certainly not worth a yellow.

Answer provided by Referee Chuck Fleischer

No one can know the reason the match referee acted the way he did. We just aren't in his head to follow the chain of thought. Besides we don't usually touch a referee at that level of skill, we just aren't equipped to do so.

We do, however, like to call attention to the words in Law 12: "A player is cautioned and shown the yellow card if he commits any of the following seven offences:" Does this not establish a chain of events that would have precluded what we saw happen from actually happening? When the referee speaks to the player to caution him he should notice the fact his name already appears in his book. Right then and there the referee can decide is what he saw merits another caution or just a strong talking to. AND this method is absolutely fool proof. It prevents what happened in World Cup 2006 and what we think we saw today.

Regards,

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Hi Chris,
right or wrong the AR had already signaled the ball HAD gone out of play. It is very likely the referee was unaware of the AR decision momentarily. I must confess I do not like this quick grab and show a card for ANY reason unless it was a STRAIGHT red card to break up a retailitory explosion for a very ugly obvious incident. I prefer to look over at the near AR call over the player id book then show the card look over to my ARs then restart the play. The officials are miked and the referee has a buzzer attached to the arm to gain quick attention to unusual situations. It was a bit of bad mechanics but if the referee accepts the AR input the ball went out of play BEFORE Kolodin's challange the he must now ask himself what did he show the card for? ! If it was for the USB of breaking up attacking play there was NO attack possible! The MISCONDUCT after play was no longer valid still could be sanctioned! A straight red for SFP would become straight red for VC. Where the referee may have felt pressured is the foul would never have occurred and the cautionable action was not sufficent in his opinion to be a reckless or USB action for a non foul event before a neccessary stoppage. It would be so interesting to hear from the officials as a fly on the wall in the post game review. Cheers

The following questions were asked as a follow up to the above question...

See Question: 19512