“Penalty Shoot-Out” – Rodric Leerling

A freezing game this weekend, scheduled late at 5pm, was supposed to produce a winner. The 1/8 cup finale was between two teams from different youth leagues.

As a winner was required, pk’s were my last resort in case of a draw after 90 minutes. I was betting for a regular winner around 7pm. Cooling down while standing still at zero Celsius is no fun I can tell you.

But it still happened, and even in the dying seconds of the game. The home team playing a lower league managed to correct the early 0-1 score into a 2-1 lead in 2nd half. But they had to allow the equalizer due to a defender error.

We tossed who would start and which five players would take the pk’s. I checked the 11meter spot distance just for the record. The astro turf penalty spot was marked clearly as a big white dot. But it wasn’t at 11. I only measured 10m so I decided to measure it again, taking big strides towards the goal line: 10 meters.

What to do? I decided not to make a big fuss about it and told each player to take the pk from just behind the white dot. The away team won after all, 20 minutes later.

I made a comment to the club contact person and advised him to check it himself the next day. He said he would. I was the first ref to have made them aware of this signage error. Somebody got to do it. It happened to be me. Typical.

“Quarter final defeat or great win?” – Rodric Leerling

When I checked the two U14 teams scheduled to play their 1/4 finale cup game, I noticed they played two divisions apart. Typical for cup games! On top of that, the guest team were, with 4 more games to go, close to promotion to the highest amateur youth league and expected to beat the lower playing home team without too much effort.

It would play out differently. After we first bowed our heads in a minute of silence to show respect to the best footballer this country has ever produced, Johan Cruijff, the game got into gear. The 1st half was quite evenly balanced in chances but came close to a home team lead in the last minute. They missed the goal by 3 inches, probably due to the strong opposing wind. You would expect it to serve as wake-up call for the guests, but shortly into 2nd half, two goals were scored within 5 minutes. A well-deserved 2-0 lead by the home team. Especially the 2nd goal was one of a shocking lousy defense. Did they just not care? I shook my head while walking back to the kick-off spot.

The guests would still manage to score two counter goals but eventually lost 3-2. Most striking (and useless) comment after 3 minutes extra time was why I blew the whistle when they were in attack. As if they only just started to play football. Too little, too late my friends. Hope you will still get your promotion to 2nd division.

(this blog might be illustrated later by a video shot during the game)