I should file this under 'laws of the game', but...regarding Chuck Donner

I'm not writing a recap this week until/unless this is settled (and I doubt it will be settled in a fashion considered satisfactory to Polonia)...but Chuck received a straight red for dissent this week in around the 80th minute of our game (guessing)...and although I attended 2 or 3 winter meetings which warned us of the forthcoming policy on swearing to refs and whatnot...let it be said, there were at most 5 people in attendance at RVS-Polonia.  I thought there were exactly 5--two sets of parents who I assumed belonged to RVS and the beloved grandfather of our team.  There were no children there.  The logic stated at the meetings was that we need to be aware of the kids, or whatever.  The only kids at Polonia games are 17-year-old David Mack, currently averaging 2 goals per game.  We've had the same ref for both of our first two games, and although I find him personally likeable (he ingratiated himself to me before the NMB game by suggesting I had Red Stag in my Tim Hortons coffee cup), I definitely don't think he's done a very good job officiating our games.  That said, I'd take him for every game assuming he would not issue any future red cards for dissent, because I know it could be worse.

BDSL has an officiating problem.  We need 36 clones of Miro...and a lot of people don't even seem to like him

so, when Chuck tells a poorly performing ref 'you're f*cking horrible' immediately after the ref decides to ignore a blatant foul in the middle of the field which leaves Chuck on the ground and RVS in possession...given the 170 minutes worth of track record we had to that point...maybe, just maybe, it was justified.

'Law 12 (FOULS AND MISCONDUCT) of the FIFA Laws of the Game (LOTG) states quite clearly and I quote:

“a player, substitute or substituted player is sent off if he commits any of the following seven offences:

Serious foul play
Violent conduct
Spitting at an opponent or any other person
Denying the opposing team a goal or an obvious goal scoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball (this does not apply to a goalkeeper within his own penalty area)
Denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity to an opponent moving towards the player’s goal by an offence punishable by a free kick or a penalty kick
Using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures
Receiving a second caution in the same match."'

Just reading this for the first time now.

First off, 'serious foul play' and 'violent conduct' are redundant. Shame on you, FIFA.

Regarding the sixth, it (i.e., what constitutes 'offensive, insulting, or abusive language') is so arbitrary. I'll give examples of its arbitariness from this very game (Polonia v RVS) should this issue be debated further

http://soccerrefereeusa.com/index.php/entry/97-bad-language-at-match-officials

alright, I guess I'm learning:

https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/footballdevelopment/refereeing/02/79/92/44/laws.of.the.game.2016.2017_neutral.pdf

that said, this is not enforced anywhere near fair across the board.  Raiders could've forfeited games in recent years due to their entire roster having reds for 'abusive language'.

I talked to old friend/former SPAL teammate/current prominent ref Ankur Singh at WSSC on Thursday...he told me a story about reffing a scrimmage of some sort (probably comparable to tonight's FC Buffalo v pride of BDSL contest) where infamous Raider Matt Waddington was involved...Waddington pretended to lose a tooth on some innocuous challenge, and Ank gave him a straight red for the deception...according to what I'm reading in the Laws of the Game here, that should've been a yellow (even as I emotionally support Ank's decision; Waddington's offense in this case was/is worse than a 'you are f*cking terrible' issued in the heat of the moment in my opinion)....

There needs to be a lot more discussion of the rules, because we have some intelligent people in this league and many of the rules are terribly.ambiguous and in need of revision  Example:

Handling the ball
Handling the ball involves a deliberate act of a player making contact with the
ball with the hand or arm.
The following must be considered:
• the movement of the hand towards the ball (not the ball towards the hand)
• the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball)
• the position of the hand does not necessarily mean that there is an
infringement
• touching the ball with an object held in the hand (clothing, shinguard, etc.)
is an infringement
• hitting the ball with a thrown object (boot, shinguard, etc.) is an
infringement

...after all that, go ahead and tell me what is and isn't 'deliberate'

(also, tell me when the ball is ever hit by a thrown object or even an object held in the hand...although I do envision future handballs to be the result of people inadvertently striking the ball with their phones)

Hey Matt maybe you and your buddy Ankur could have another talk because that never occurred. First of all I have had two reds in my life in Buffalo and he was not the ref for either and both were on two yellows, not a straight red. Secondly one time during a scrimmage in which my Canadian team was playing at UB I had my front tooth broken off from an elbow in which there was no call. I ran to the bench grabbed my stuff and went to the hospital. So I have an idea, why don't you keep my name out of your mouth and off the computer. You and your buddy Ankur can talk about me all night long while you are having pillow talk if you need to but in a public setting maybe you should control your large mouth. You are constantly on here talking about something that you are awful at and always are using peoples names. You my friend are an idiot so why don't you spend more time worrying about your life and less about trying to use other peoples names in a negative connotation. You boarder on the line of defamation. Don't worry I will have a long chat with Ankur as well, personally.

Foul and abusive language can and will always be handled differently by many officials. Some will go straight red. Some will try to manage it with a caution. Some may even ignore it and leave themselves susceptible to further verbal abuse. Just because there were 5 people in attendance/none were young doesn't mean it isn't validated. You can go looking through the LOTG and interpret them however you see fit. Once you have officiated matches and have a lot of experience with a lot of different players, you'll come to your own conclusions of whether a caution is enough or a send off is necessary. Your referee that day chose not to tolerate it.

Raider10Wadd wrote:Hey Matt maybe you and your buddy Ankur could have another talk because that never occurred.  First of all I have had two reds in my life in Buffalo and he was not the ref for either and both were on two yellows, not a straight red.  Secondly one time during a scrimmage in which my Canadian team was playing at UB I had my front tooth broken off from an elbow in which there was no call.  I ran to the bench grabbed my stuff and went to the hospital.  So I have an idea, why don't you keep my name out of your mouth and off the computer.  You and your buddy Ankur can talk about me all night long while you are having pillow talk if you need to but in a public setting maybe you should control your large mouth.  You are constantly on here talking about something that you are awful at and always are using peoples names.  You my friend are an idiot so why don't you spend more time worrying about your life and less about trying to use other peoples names in a negative connotation.  You boarder on the line of defamation.  Don't worry I will have a long chat with Ankur as well, personally.  

Grade level: 1.5

any and all Walters are welcome to reply to this thread.  Matt, awful as I may be at...soccer (you can't possibly claim I'm bad at writing--very few people in the world can make that claim with any legitimacy)...your BSC Raiders beat my Polonia 1-0 (not 2-0 as the Sahlens website claimed) this winter on a 30-yard knuckling strike from Pikuzinski...Kendell did hit the 'bar as well, but...I'll see you on the field someday.  Don't retire/questionably lose all your teeth before 2019, okay?

You're obviously a legend of writing within your own mind as your punctuation leaves much to be desired. There is an old saying that comes to mind "it is difficult to persuade someone while antagonizing them." You constantly post trying to throw in what little you know about the game and try to stir things up. While drunk at 3am on a week night because you're trying to drown your sorrows. With every post you lose more and more credibility and that was in the toilet before your first word because of your shocking talent. Do yourself a favor and quit the forum, quit playing the game and work on your personal life, I have seen this many times before on TV. Guy drinks every night, post on websites, buys cats as friends......the end is never good.

between the above and the select few posts I recall you making under your previous pseudonym, definitely your all-time best forum effort

(intended to be a backhanded compliment in the soft bigotry of low expectations vein, but I hope you might take enough inspiration from it to beat your current week's opponent 10-1 while also drawing a red card from some 19-year-old who lands a weak elbow against your jaw while both of you are airborne for a 50/50)

Ankur Singh wrote:Foul and abusive language can and will always be handled differently by many officials. Some will go straight red. Some will try to manage it with a caution. Some may even ignore it and leave themselves susceptible to further verbal abuse. Just because there were 5 people in attendance/none were young doesn't mean it isn't validated. You can go looking through the LOTG and interpret them however you see fit. Once you have officiated matches and have a lot of experience with a lot of different players, you'll come to your own conclusions of whether a caution is enough or a send off is necessary. Your referee that day chose not to tolerate it.

Ank, just to revisit this for a second...you're therefore admitting that for you and perhaps for 'the silent majority' of refs for which you speak, it is entirely arbitrary? Here I was at least enjoying my learning of 'abusive language' being reason for a red card...you're saying that refs will use their discretion, which to me is likely to = 'playing favorites'?

gonna have to take this to the supreme court of FIFA, supremely corrupt though they may be. Sepp Blatter already told his successor to hate me

I only speak for myself and those I consider to be my mentors along the way. I don't know about playing favorites. If you decided at some point to go on some profanity-laced tirade, you could get one as well. Just saying some have thicker skin than others and some manage it differently. Many of the LOTG are arbitrary but there is a huge difference between hearing it at various levels and various other factors. Just chalk it up to 'any given Sunday' and 'as the spheroid bounces.'

I have no ultimate problem with them being arbitrary, but 'the game' (from FIFA's highest levels) should make that known. It should be clarified that they are GsOTG rather than LsOTG (guidelines of the game)....

Laws and Guidelines are interchangeable terms when it comes to the game in its current form. If referees followed the IFAB rules to the letter, then IMO, more than half of amateur and perhaps pro soccer games would rarely finish 11 a side due to foul and abusive language, serious foul play, violent conduct, etc.