Australia and the hand ball

Actually it was way more than a handball, it was catch, hold, hold, hold, drop the ball to the ground. What an officiating mess.

I think we can be assured the remainder ms Graal's stay in Germany will be of the sightseeing nature.

I gotta say, though, that the biggest mistake the ref made was to allow the keeper a kit color so close to the field player color. I had to look for the keeper gloves to be sure.

In the Bigsoccer referee section, one "ref" said that if she got confused by the kit, she should have called a pass back to the keeper. Another said no, the pass wasn't with the foot...

Refs think weird.

And in the second game, Marta got away with a blatant push for her goal.

Yes, it was a pretty blatant push by Marta. Luckily the Brazil offense has made a shambles of Norway's defense in the second half.

How much juice do the sideline ref's have? Are they comparable to the on field ref when it comes to asserting themselves on a call or are they subservient to the on fielder?

A_Fan wrote:
How much juice do the sideline ref's have? Are they comparable to the on field ref when it comes to asserting themselves on a call or are they subservient to the on fielder?

The ref has the final say, but the linesmen can now call fouls. That's why they are now called assistant referees. I think when you and I started watching games at Merlo, they could only call offsides and signal the ball had crossed a line.

But it still varies widely. The NCAA manual has a clause that the head referee is to inform the AR's how much input he wants.

Some AR's have said on the referee forum that the instruction is sometimes close to "I have a white badge. Shut up and stand on the sideline."

The discussion of the hand ball on the referee forums gets better and better.

One ref excused the color issue which I mentioned, but there were two Australians pointing at the hand ball and gesturing wildly.

Another "ref" positted that it wasn't a hand ball because the ref may have decided it wasn't deliberate.
( who can argue with that? The rule is one of those " in the opinion of the referee" rules)

If you think this is a rare call, there are at least three just like it on YouTube. One involved Korea and Germany, I forget the others. It was called a PK and a yellow every time.

"Gyoengyl Gaal" Wasn't that a name from Lord of the Rings?

I thought it was Klingon

Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!

Purplegeezer wrote:

A_Fan wrote:
How much juice do the sideline ref's have? Are they comparable to the on field ref when it comes to asserting themselves on a call or are they subservient to the on fielder?

The ref has the final say, but the linesmen can now call fouls. That's why they are now called assistant referees. I think when you and I started watching games at Merlo, they could only call offsides and signal the ball had crossed a line.

But it still varies widely. The NCAA manual has a clause that the head referee is to inform the AR's how much input he wants.

Some AR's have said on the referee forum that the instruction is sometimes close to "I have a white badge. Shut up and stand on the sideline."

Recall that the fourth official reported Zidane's headbutt in the 06 final. And he saw it himself, he wasn't watching a replay, no sir ().

The AR or 4th knows the center will pretty much have to call whatever gets reported to him so whatever they decide to report better be important.

A_Fan wrote:

How much juice do the sideline ref's have? Are they comparable to the on field ref when it comes to asserting themselves on a call or are they subservient to the on fielder?

I think I have a little better answer to your question. It at least gives you and idea how AR's are directed to engage or limit their involvement in decisions being made.

It's one of USSoccer's directives to referees. These are documents officials are expected to abide by, and by which referees are judged in their promotion path.

http://www.coreferees.org/documents/1.02-Assistant__Referee_Involvementpdf.pdf

It's off the Colorado officials site, but I see it does have the USSoccer shield on it.

It seems clear from those rules that the AR's should make calls that the Referee misses, but in this case it seems #1 covers this situation exactly:

"1. Game Critical Decisions Situations in which the AR is 100% certain of what he saw – regardless of the position / attitude of the referee"

It seems hard to believe that neither one of the AR's didn't see the play.