Calling offside earlier as an AR
Calling offside earlier as an AR
At higher levels, a later call may be more appropriate. But I tried this during a lower-level match and it had a bad outcome.
These are my gameday notes from yesterday’s matches. I did a U14 CR and U18 AR.
Here’s what I’m keeping with me moving forward!
I watch a lot of Premier League
This means I also watch a lot of refereeing in the Premier League.
And what I’ve tried to do up until now is duplicate as closely as possible what the CRs and ARs do at that level.
But as most people who watch a lot of professional soccer know, ARs signal for offside pretty late unless it’s an obvious call.
There are a few reasons for this:
VAR can always reverse an incorrect call in a big moment so they’ll often let play continue to see if a goal is scored or not.
The threshold for “active in play” is just higher for more advanced players.
The worst thing about late offside calls
It’s obvious, right?
When an AR calls for offside late, it allows 5-10 seconds of play in which players can get injured that likely wouldn’t have counted anyway.
And that’s what happened to me yesterday…
My late call
I was AR1 for my second game yesterday.
In the middle of the second half, a midfielder played a through ball to one of his attackers from around midfield.
One defender who had been lagging behind his teammates had stepped up well in the moment and caught both attackers offside when the ball was played.
I knew the attacker was in an offside position, but was yet to become active in play so I kept my flag down.
He actually slowed a bit, probably wondering if he was offside. So again, I kept my flag down.
At the last moment, he accelerated again as the goalkeeper was coming out to clear the ball. I put my flag up as quickly as possible but at that point the timing was off with the CR.
I think what happened is the CR had looked at me early for the call. When he didn’t see my flag up, he looked back towards active play and didn’t see my subsequent raised flag.
The attacking player collided with the goalkeeper and both players stayed down.
Shit. Worst case scenario…
Some good news
Both players were down on the ground for a couple minutes and coaches were called onto the field.
But I’m happy to report that both players walked away without any serious injury. Neither looked shaken and both were ready to get back to the game.
My take: The CR told me during the stoppage to call that offside earlier and I confirmed I would.
The other AR also talked with me about it after the game and told me to, “forget everything you’ve learned watching them call offsides in the Prem [for lower-level games]”.
The lesson here is to call offside earlier than you would for a really high level game. Keep the ‘active in play’ threshold low in these situations.
Keeping players safe is our highest priority. I failed the players in that moment but it was a good mistake to make once without any resulting injury so I won’t make it again.
Know a soccer ref? Feel free to share this with them 💙