Making Mistakes in the Dying Minutes

Going through the Wataniya Dhivehi Leagues’ reports by the referees’ assessors, the statistic shows that most of the incidents occurred during the last quarter of the match. Red card incidents not sanction appropriately, yellow cards shown simultaneously in a short span of time - having to give a few cautions to have the game under control, incidents occurred with the referee not giving the correct decisions, players are cautioned for dissent, whistle to penalise fouls when a goal scoring chance or a good attacking move existed, offside incidents missed or incorrectly judged by the assistant referees – to name a few.
Have you ever thought of the reasons why these things happen? In your self-assessment (if any) do you ever wonder what causes or spurs the incidents to happen? Some may still be pondering and wondering why! Let me highlight a few possibilities that you may want to take into consideration in order to have a better preparation for the future matches.
Certain serious or even trifle fouls in the early part of the match were not treated with care and assertiveness. "When you do not put out the small fire early, it will become out of control in the end". A verbal or a stern warning may help to reduce the anger or abrassion. Dissent or verbal abuses not checked properly by stern warning or the showing of yellow card early may eventually leads to many occasions of players not respecting the decisions and verbally or publicly abusing the match official. Certain bad attitude by players should be seen as a threat to the game and if the referee allows the culprit to increase his terror in the field, it will leads to more problems.
Lack of concentration may occurs when a referee begin to feel complacent – happy and contented with his decisions or performance or with a large score-line margin. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going but if the referee is not ready or fail to anticipate the “unexpeceted”, they will be left stunted when incident beyond his control occurs and will be seen to be undecided in their decisions. There is the saying, “ when everything seems to be going on well, there will be something that you will overlook”. When the referee gets tired at the last quarter of the match or was exposed to series of dissent, appeal or confrontation by players which makes him get tensed up, this it the time where he will tend to make mistake or lack concentration, not seeing things that he is supposed to have seen (in front of him), not taking the correct or appropriate or strong actions, missing fouls or the assistant’s flag and other incidents that may be small or large but will be detrimental to his performance or influences the confidence of players, team officials or even the crowd to his decisions. In 50-50 situations, do not make decisions that would bring about problems to the match - a goal kick is better than a corner kick, throw in to the losing side or the defender and etc. Many assessors do advise the referees to be more careful especially during the dying minutes of the match. Move nearer to gain the confidence of the players and to on the incidents when it occur. This will help him to regain his own confidence and thus his performance.