Saturday Games and mid year Thoughts on teams in 1A And 2A

[jarrydfurnell]

Being that we are half way through the season have people changed their predictions from the start of the year? Also calls on this weeks games in 1A and 2A what are peoples thoughts?

[mancity]

In regards to div1a I thought sacred heart would be doing a lot better than they are. Not sure if there missing players though but 6.0 defeat at the weekend really shocked me. I expected them fighting for the title.
Pembroke, grads red, rostrevor look the strongest teams this year and I expect one of them to take the title. Unley could also make a push. After grads win against Pembroke at the weekend, they now face rostrevor in another 6pointer. Regency eagles also have surprised me this year too, they seem to be picking up points where I haven't expected them too. Also was expecting a bit more of a push from Mercedes.i think this year though most games are pretty close and that makes for a good league.

Grads 3.1 rostrevor, unbeaten and at home I think grads.
Mercedes 2.2 sacred heart, think sacred will have a point to prove from last week
Uni sa 1.2 Pembroke, Pembroke just to strong but could be tricky.
Unley 1.0 uni white, close game home advantage get them the win
Westminster 1.1 regency eagles. Close game stalemate.

Good luck to all teams.

[yak]

I watched the Sacred Heart v Uni Whites game & there's something not quite right with Sacred Heart at the moment. They seemed to get frustrated easily & then completely lost shape late in the game. Not sure if they've had a bit of player turnover, but they're definitely not the strong, organised, confident team from last season.
Grads Red & Rostrevor have both looked pretty impressive this season, i really think it's a tussle between those 2 teams for the A1 title this year. Maybe Grads Red have the edge. They do look very dangerous going forward.

[INTERISTA]

I think Grads Red is a stronger position compared to ROCSC & POCCSC. ROCSC early form was good however recent long term injuries to some very key players may affect their run home. I am also surprised about MERCS and SHOCs thought they'd be closer to the pack. Still a lot of games to go!

[INTERISTA]

Grads Red vs ROCSC A game was abandoned in the 80th minute due to an alleged threat made by Grads Red supporters to the Ref.

[wojindows]

What was the score?

[chelsea]

0-0 when the game was called off. Will be a long week with a few other incidents. Also catch up games for many teams.

[yak]

Dude, that's a bit of a worry re Grads Red v Rostrevor. Good on the Ref for pulling the pin. Definitely not on from the supporters, we have enough trouble finding ref's each week..

[John Pits]

As an official of Grads Red, I'm going to go ahead and make a comment here before things get blown out of proportion.

Yak, don't jump to conclusions and congratulate the referee on "pulling the pin" when you don't know the facts at all. If you go back and read Interista's comment, you will see he wrote "alleged". Let me tell you right now that this sort of behaviour is not accepted from our club. If anyone was to threaten the referee from our sideline, they would be sent home and never welcome back at the club.

We enjoy a little banter, just like every other club does. The previous week, we played against another club and they were letting the referee have it the whole game when our As were up. Yelling all sorts of abuse toward him. He played the game on, the score stood and that was that. No one heard anything the following week.

I understand that a lot of the Collegiate League feel some sort of animosity against our club and to be honest, we thrive on that energy. We play the game, cop the abuse and we shake hands after. It disappoints me though, that we get targeted a lot, when there are far more serious things going on i.e referees getting hit and attacked. This has happened a few times in the past couple years (including this year) and I haven't seen any clubs being fined or put on probation for it.

The facts from the weekend are these:

The referee allowed 2 clear offside goals in the Bs game for Rostrevor, when the linesman had his flag up on both occasions (I understand this happens, but I'll get back to this point a little further down).

There was an incident when a player received 2 yellow cards and was not sent off in the Bs game.

The referee sent the wrong player off in the As game for Rostrevor and it took many minutes of talking to him, both from Rostrevor players AND Grads Red players to make him correct his decision.

In the As match, Grads Red had a play that we felt was fair and onside. The linesman raised his flag and the referee waved play on. The play resulted in a goal. The teams went on to get ready to start the match again, set in their halves and the ball in the middle of the park. The referee then went over to the linesman and after talking to him for a couple minutes, reversed his decision. Where is the consistency there?

That is the point where the referee said he was threatened and called the game off. He then went on to have a conversation with the club officials where he stated that if he was given a particular person's name, he would play the game on. If he legitimately felt threatened, why would that be an option?


Before the match, we knew about this referee and were warned by a member of the Collegiate League board to be careful and play it smart if the referee got out of hand. We were told to film any controversy as evidence. Thankfully, an official from our club brought a camera out and has evidence of many of these incidents on camera.

It's no surprise that this referee has been involved in 4 of the 5 matches being abandoned across the Collegiate League this season. It's easy to say that some clubs are scumbags and it's their fault, but sometimes guys, the officials really are that terrible. It's no surprise that when we have decent referees (win or lose) there is rarely any incident to speak of.

The referee isn't fit to referee at this level, or any other level for that matter. That is just plain to see for all. Despite the fact that we have shortage of referees, surely we can all agree that having a club appointed referee is better than letting someone like this referee a match. Whether it's division 1 or division 5, no one deserves to pay money, train, come out and have their weekend ruined by someone that's so incompetent.

People like this need to be taken away from refereeing and the game, so they can't bring the league and game into such disrepute.

[StevenMann]

The previous week, we played against another club and they were letting the referee have it the whole game when our As were up. Yelling all sorts of abuse toward him. He played the game on, the score stood and that was that. No one heard anything the following week.

- Not sure what you could hear from 40+ yards away, but I was a spectator at the match you're referring to and didn't hear any abuse towards the ref. Absolutely there was dissent from a lot of our supporters over a number of the decisions - the referee had a pretty poor game over a large number of decisions, but supporters can't be cautioned for dissent, only substitutes and players. Like your team, we accepted the result at 90 minutes, shook hands, and that was that.

In the As match, Grads Red had a play that we felt was fair and onside. The linesman raised his flag and the referee waved play on. The play resulted in a goal. The teams went on to get ready to start the match again, set in their halves and the ball in the middle of the park. The referee then went over to the linesman and after talking to him for a couple minutes, reversed his decision. Where is the consistency there?

Just an observation for a technical standpoint here - a lot of people are of the mistaken impression that the referee can't reverse his decision in an instance like this. As long as play has not been restarted, the referee is absolutely entitled to change a decision. Obviously the longer the time that elapses between the initial stoppage and the change of decision, the more people will be upset & confused by it, but in this case the laws of the game err on the side of having a correct decision as often as possible. I can't venture any further opinion on those 3 offside incidents you referred to, other than to say that some referees will consistently over-rule linesmen in situations where the referee deems he has a clear view of the play. I've seen some very questionable over-rules in this scenario though, and I'm generally very much against the idea of a referee over-ruling the linesman in that situation. Club assistant referees/linesmen have to be trusted to act with integrity & sportsmanship in this league, or else it won't function properly - we can't even get a full allotment of referees every week, let alone full assistant refs.

In an example of the ball being played towards two strikers, one of whom receives the ball and then scores... if the linesman raised his flag when the ball was played, the referee may allow the play to continue if he believes the linesman was flagging the passive player. Once the goal is scored, he then goes to the sideline and checks with the linesman which player he was flagging. If it was the active player - reverse the goal and award the offside, if it was the passive player then the goal stands. If the referee blew his whistle immediately when the flag was raised, then he could potentially foil a strong goal-scoring opportunity if the linesman had flagged the passive player.