Good Sportsmanship
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Dec 30 2008 at 12:23 PM
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Recently in a under 10 boys club game, there was a great opportunity to teach good sportsmanship. There had been an injury in the red defending team penalty area. One of the defenders had run into his own goal keeper and knocked him down. As the referee, keeping an eye on the player on the ground, I allowed the blue attack on goal to continue. Why? Because it wasn't the blue attacking team's fault that the red defenders ran into each other, as unlucky as it was had the blue team scored. However, player safety is always foremost in our minds as referees, so making sure the injured player doesn't get further injury is paramount. The blue team was unable to get the ball in the net and a red defender kicked the ball to midfield and I stopped play. Two or three minutes passed before the red goal keeper was ready to continue.Â

I restarted play with a dropped ball at midfield, because, one, the ball had never left the field, and two, that's where the ball was when I stopped play. As players get older, they learn to kick the ball out when there is an injury. When play is restarted, the team that didn't kick the ball out, usually will just throw the ball to the other team as a courtesy.Â

Now in this particular case, no one had kicked the ball out. So a dropped ball at midfield is as about as even as there is. As I dropped the ball, the blue player is looking blankly to his own touchline, the red player plays the ball and then the blue coach screams at me, "Sir WHAT ARE YOU DOING???" At the next stoppage of play, I jogged over to the coach, inviting him on the field to find out exactly what his problem was. He informs me that he was trying to teach his team good sportsmanship by, on the dropped ball, kicking it to the red goal keeper. Now I get what he had in his head, but it wasn't a dropped ball only to his team and he had plenty of time to instruct his player during the injury stoppage. Plus, play hadn't been stopped in the penalty area so why would we want to go back there? If that was the case, I would have dropped the ball to the red goalkeeper. And exactly what kind of sportsmanship did the coach display by screaming at me?