Question Number: 27154

Law 5 - The Referee 2/4/2013

RE: Under 10

Football father of London, UK asks...

We recently attended a match and the opposition coach took on the Referee duties.
Right from the first whistle he was coaching his team. Specifically telling his players where to run, instructing on passes, where to place a free-kick and corner kick. Despite derision from parents he continued. He carried with him a cup of coffee for the first 10 mins.
When challenged by one of our parents about being unfair he laughed and carried on.
In the second match his team were far stronger, coupled with our demoralised team it became a whitewash. Seemingly bored the ref now decided to watch his other teams match on an adjacent pitch, furthermore he even took a phone call.
I know you will agree with the simple facts that this was entirely unfair, rude, only likely to cause problems with the two sets of fans/parents (which it did),and most importantly upset the children on our team.

However, my questions are:
Are there a set of rules that youth referees should abide by?
Is it just a moral circumstance that the ref should be impartial or are the common sense rules laid down to adhere too?

I look forward to your reply.

Answer provided by Referee Dennis Wickham

I do not know of a single nine year old who would want to not play soccer simply because a neutral referee was not present. The children want to have fun, and they want to please their parents. The alternative is not to play the game. I suspect that the two coaches got together and agreed that one of them would be the "referee" so that the game could be played.

My experience is that the adults- - who alone see bias and unfairness in allowing the child's game to be played - - can spoil the enjoyment of the players when they apply an adult standard to a child's match. (At older and competitive levels, a neutral referee is required.) Some recreational leagues cannot afford referees. Others have a shortage of trained referees.

Usually, the 'referee' forced into doing the match would much rather be a coach or spectator than have to deal with the derision of the parents of the opposing team (and the derision of the parents of her own team) .

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi
Interesting question and one that has many facets to it. I would make the following comments
1. What happened here was a coach with a whistle not a referee and he should not have acted as he did. I suspect that he simply saw this a 'game' requiring little referee involvement. This was a matter for the competition organisers to manage properly and it should not have been allowed to happen.
2. With a shortage of referees worldwide, finding people to officiate games is proving very difficult particularly at the very younger age groups. The choice facing many is whether to allow games to proceed with an 'unofficial' referee who probably is reluctant to do so or not to play at all.
3. When 'someone' takes over refereeing duties they are not bound by any refereeing code of conduct or referee policies / rules. They are simply bound by general principles of what would be acceptable in a game environment. The main priority though should be child safety and that has to be managed by the organisers.
4. As a child growing up we did not have any referees in our 'games' just 'natural' decision making by ourselves. I believe one of the problems that we have created is that very young children games get treated in an ultra competitive way with adult values being introduced. I would much rather see a situation were very young players simply played the game with as little interference as possible by adults. I see coaching / training / games that are adult based and simply tries to force children to adapt to adult centred values / rules.
I refereed a series of U8 games recently and it was a bigger issue dealing with the adults than the game itself. Fouls did not happen and it was generally comings together or players getting hit with the ball that required attention.
'Managers' spent their time shouting in instructions about positioning, getting player to move forward, backwards etc. I really wished that the adults would have allowed the children to play with no 'interference'.
Finally we all don't want to see this happening in our games. The answer is to ensure that the games are covered by official referees who are bound by a code and rules.

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

See Question: 27169