Question Number: 21294

League Specific 5/6/2009

RE: High School

Fred Landau of Harrisburg, PA USA asks...

This question is a follow up to question 21288

Here in Pennsylvania certain High School regular season and all playoff games employ the Double-Dual system which has 3 referees on the field, each with a whistle. The lead and trail officials are generally positioned to judge offside and ball out of play but also whistle fouls and other infringements. The third official generally runs a standard diagonal. And, to keep it really interesting, the referees rotate positions at aproximately 1/3 and 2/3 of the match (about the 28th and 56th minute of an 80 minute match).

If all three officials are on the same page, it can work. If not, it can really frustrate the players as they adjust to constantly changing styles.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

I just heard of this particular bit of insanity. Sounds absolutely absurd and I see no way this is even a remotely fair method. Why do Americans feel the need to muck around with a perfectly good system is beyond me. When everybody had a whistle, everybody is in charge. While this works in basketball where each official has an area of the court to watch, the soccer field is too big and there's too much going on for this to work. More needless tinkering with a perfectly good system.

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

Thanks for the update FRED!
I use this idea in TRAINING!
Switching about as a form of mentoring and evaluation to review in practice. It would be horrible in a match because the level of consistency is impossible to follow! We do this as a interaction of training between players, coaches and the officials for a practise session certainly not a competitive match! We constantly stop, start and discuss while engaged in overall generalizations about angles of view , positioning, mechanics, player and coach perspectives, etc?
Cheers

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

See Question: 21305