Kathleen Nelson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
> Why is it only the responsibility of the ref to keep the players from
> inflicting these kinds of injuries on each other??
>
> What happened to the coaches taking the responsibility for making sure that
> their players that their teams know that that sort of violent behavior is
> unacceptable in their programs?
 
Hear, hear!  I was waiting for somebody to state the obvious.  I used to ref
soccer games, and I'll never forget one high school game in particular.  In
the first minute of the game, we handed out a yellow card.
 
Which of course begs the question -- what horrible thing did we refs do
to be responsible for such violent behavior?  (That was a satirical question,
I'm not waiting for an answer...)
 
It also begs the next obvious follow-up -- with that show of force from the
refs, the game obviously had no problems again, right?  Wrong!  This game
deteriorated even further.  By the time it was over, we handed out 3 yellow
cars, 3 red cards, one of the goalies got kicked in the head twice in two
separate incidents, and a fight broke out.  (Yes, this really was soccer,
not hockey.)
 
I still to this day consider this game to be one of my better performances.
The problem became quite evident to me near the end of the game.  Both
coaches were of the philosophy that it is the referee's responsibility to
control the players, not their's.  BALDERDASH!!  It is first and foremost the
coach's responsibility!
 
I'll certainly admit that there was a game or two where I performed badly
and things got out of hand because of it, but 99% of the time, the makeup
of the players and the coach are responsible for games getting out of hand.
 
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