He forgot his yellow and red cards
You're in the middle of a match and realize you forgot an important piece of equipment. What do you do?
This happened in a Boys U18 game I was ARing last weekend.
I forgot about it until this morning so decided to write about it. I think there’s a good lesson here.
Around the 30th minute (we were playing full 45 minute halves) the referee ran over to me during a stoppage. I was alert and ready to chat with him. I thought he was coming over to discuss a call, clarify a competition rule or double check how long the halves were.
When you work a lot of games in different competitions, all the different competition rules can get a bit hard to keep track of. I work hard to try to make sure I remember them all but they can be easy to mix up.
As he ran past me he said, “I don’t have my yellow and red cards on me!”
I immediately said, “here, use mine!” I always keep my cards, whistles and coin on me even as an AR just in case something like this happens or I have to jump in as the center for some reason (injury, etc).
Instead, he opted to take 10 extra seconds to go into his bag to get his. I don’t think this hurt the flow of the game anymore than him running over to the touchline but he probably should have swallowed his pride and used mine.
The game continued after the short stoppage and we played on. Everybody seemed to respect the referee even with his gaffe but it likely hurt his focus for at least the rest of the half.
Takeaways:
I need to continue to be diligent about my pre-match mental checklist. It’s easy to forget to do it now that I’m a bit more experienced and confident that I’m fully prepared. Whistles, coin, watches, yellow card and red card are just the minimum I need to remember. Always be self-reliant. No getting lazy.
Keep all my equipment on me even when I’m the AR. Your goal as AR is to assist the center in any way possible during the game and that includes helping them with equipment. I didn’t get to do that in this story but I was fully prepared to and that’s all I can do.
Know a soccer ref? Feel free to share this with them 💙