Charges for bookings/red cards make refs job impossible

Was reading "your favourite ref" section, and it got me thinking about refs and decisions on a sunday.

Interested to know peoples views. The system of bookings for players comes with a £10 fine, and a red card is £30/£40/£50 (or whatever it is). This creates a problem because referees sometimes hesitate to hand out a card because they dont want to charge the player £10 for a late tackle on a sunday morning (fair enough from them), but this can backfire, as players can get away with a dangerous tackle or a "last man" incident. So ultimately, I dont think the correct decisions are given a lot of the time. I realise this is sunday stuff and I am not saying I want to see players being booked all the time, but I think that referees are put in a tough situation whereby they know they should be producing a card for something, but just give a player a word in the ear because its £10 or £30 fine. This has happened to me this season when I am clear through on goal in a pretty big league game, and a player deliberatly pulled me down, last man. Without a doubt in a proffesional game this would be a red card, and rightly so because its basically cheating so the player cannot score. But this would never be given on a sunday because of the charge which comes with a red card. I also think that certain players (a small minority) seem to wake up on a sunday and just want to see how hard they can smash the opposition with tackles, which often means they can get away with 3,4 or 5 dangerous tackles before they get a booking.
I appreciate that if you are sent of for violent conduct or spitting or something similar, you deserve every penny of the fine, but for a last man challenge, surely the player SHOULD be sent off, but a £35 would be ridiculous as its part of the game, and is likely to happen a lot.

Not saying I have all the answers for this, but I cant help feel that the system is built in a way where each referee makes up their own rules and decideds what to do on the spur of the moment, as they cannot apply the rules properly because it would cost players a fortune.
Something like £5 for a yellow card and £10-£30 for a red (depending on the seriousness of the offence)....I think this would give referees a much better chance of applying the rules more effectively and overall standards of players and officials would go up.

What do people think?

Same rules should apply whatever level of football. That should be a red card for a last man but the level of payment should be cheaper. Accidental or synical fouls like that would be lower end and deliberate or reckless tackles along with punching, fighting etc should be more. One of our players received a yellow card on Sunday for taking a drink of water on the pitch whilst the opposition went to retrieve the ball for their throwing!

mmm_boogie wrote:

Was reading "your favourite ref" section, and it got me thinking about refs and decisions on a sunday.

Interested to know peoples views. The system of bookings for players comes with a £10 fine, and a red card is £30/£40/£50 (or whatever it is). This creates a problem because referees sometimes hesitate to hand out a card because they dont want to charge the player £10 for a late tackle on a sunday morning (fair enough from them), but this can backfire, as players can get away with a dangerous tackle or a "last man" incident. So ultimately, I dont think the correct decisions are given a lot of the time. I realise this is sunday stuff and I am not saying I want to see players being booked all the time, but I think that referees are put in a tough situation whereby they know they should be producing a card for something, but just give a player a word in the ear because its £10 or £30 fine. This has happened to me this season when I am clear through on goal in a pretty big league game, and a player deliberatly pulled me down, last man. Without a doubt in a proffesional game this would be a red card, and rightly so because its basically cheating so the player cannot score. But this would never be given on a sunday because of the charge which comes with a red card. I also think that certain players (a small minority) seem to wake up on a sunday and just want to see how hard they can smash the opposition with tackles, which often means they can get away with 3,4 or 5 dangerous tackles before they get a booking.
I appreciate that if you are sent of for violent conduct or spitting or something similar, you deserve every penny of the fine, but for a last man challenge, surely the player SHOULD be sent off, but a £35 would be ridiculous as its part of the game, and is likely to happen a lot.

Not saying I have all the answers for this, but I cant help feel that the system is built in a way where each referee makes up their own rules and decideds what to do on the spur of the moment, as they cannot apply the rules properly because it would cost players a fortune.
Something like £5 for a yellow card and £10-£30 for a red (depending on the seriousness of the offence)....I think this would give referees a much better chance of applying the rules more effectively and overall standards of players and officials would go up.

What do people think?

Totally agree. Sometimes, I feel that it is necessary to give a yellow card for a slightly mistimed tackle (but not dangerous) that imo is not worthy of a £10 fine but then you get some idiot who'll clobber someone with brute force - yellow card but worthy of a £10 fine. Would you want to give the referees the power to submit extra information to the FA stating whether a player deserves a fine for the yellow card or not? Interesting debate certainly

When the ref puts the booking report in he could probably give it a grade of 1-5 of how serious the incident was and therefore prices would vary from the 1-5 just an idea i'm putting out there

respect your post boogie, and it is an interesting debate. but one thing that I would like to say as part of the refereeing fraternity: I obviously can't speak for all referees, but at no time ever in any game I have officiated in have I even stopped to think about yellow or red carding a player because it might cost them xxx amount of pounds. In other words, if it's an offence by the laws of the game, they get the card that is necessary. I will counterbalance this by saying that I try hard to try to 'manage' players as all refs do, and actually keeps the cards in my pocket, but sometimes you have no choice. Your post has the ring of a player to it, and not someone who has refereed, but you make a good point! Earlier this season I sent someone off for stopping a goal bound shot with his hands, just before the resultant penalty. It was an instinctive motion on his part, but he still had to go.

The penalities for all infringements resulting in a yellow or red card are clearly laid out by the FA. When we started Magna, we found we had a fair few yellows and one red in a matter of games so we shared the penalties (fines) with the players and the cards soon went down. We even won the divisional fair play award one year!!

Receiving yellow and red cards are part of the game that every footballer chooses to play in and so they should expect to receive a fine should they cause an infringement that results in a card and should know what the likely costs are.

All of this said, I do think some refs don't give cards out for things which warrant them and other refs (as suggested by Allen654) go the complete opposite way so there is an inbalance which maybe a scale of 1-5 could support the cost imposed, but surely in time this would then fail to be consistent as is the giving of yellow/red cards at the moment!

Katie G wrote:

The penalities for all infringements resulting in a yellow or red card are clearly laid out by the FA. When we started Magna, we found we had a fair few yellows and one red in a matter of games so we shared the penalties (fines) with the players and the cards soon went down. We even won the divisional fair play award one year!!

Receiving yellow and red cards are part of the game that every footballer chooses to play in and so they should expect to receive a fine should they cause an infringement that results in a card and should know what the likely costs are.

All of this said, I do think some refs don't give cards out for things which warrant them and other refs (as suggested by Allen654) go the complete opposite way so there is an inbalance which maybe a scale of 1-5 could support the cost imposed, but surely in time this would then fail to be consistent as is the giving of yellow/red cards at the moment!

they are clearly marked out for the professional game, grass roots football is a completely different set of rules.

eg assault on an official is a 5 year ban for us, slap on the wrist for a pro. joke

hotshot66 wrote:

Katie G wrote:

The penalities for all infringements resulting in a yellow or red card are clearly laid out by the FA. When we started Magna, we found we had a fair few yellows and one red in a matter of games so we shared the penalties (fines) with the players and the cards soon went down. We even won the divisional fair play award one year!!

Receiving yellow and red cards are part of the game that every footballer chooses to play in and so they should expect to receive a fine should they cause an infringement that results in a card and should know what the likely costs are.

All of this said, I do think some refs don't give cards out for things which warrant them and other refs (as suggested by Allen654) go the complete opposite way so there is an inbalance which maybe a scale of 1-5 could support the cost imposed, but surely in time this would then fail to be consistent as is the giving of yellow/red cards at the moment!

they are clearly marked out for the professional game, grass roots football is a completely different set of rules.

eg assault on an official is a 5 year ban for us, slap on the wrist for a pro. joke

Are you saying that assaulting a Sunday referee should result in just a slap on the wrist?!

Didn't Di Canio get 7/8 game ban for his push (hardly assault).

Sparta3 wrote:

hotshot66 wrote:

Katie G wrote:

The penalities for all infringements resulting in a yellow or red card are clearly laid out by the FA. When we started Magna, we found we had a fair few yellows and one red in a matter of games so we shared the penalties (fines) with the players and the cards soon went down. We even won the divisional fair play award one year!!

Receiving yellow and red cards are part of the game that every footballer chooses to play in and so they should expect to receive a fine should they cause an infringement that results in a card and should know what the likely costs are.

All of this said, I do think some refs don't give cards out for things which warrant them and other refs (as suggested by Allen654) go the complete opposite way so there is an inbalance which maybe a scale of 1-5 could support the cost imposed, but surely in time this would then fail to be consistent as is the giving of yellow/red cards at the moment!

they are clearly marked out for the professional game, grass roots football is a completely different set of rules.

eg assault on an official is a 5 year ban for us, slap on the wrist for a pro. joke

Are you saying that assaulting a Sunday referee should result in just a slap on the wrist?!

Didn't Di Canio get 7/8 game ban for his push (hardly assault).

no im not saying it should be a slap on the wrist, im just pointing out its not the same as the professional game.

eg spitting is classed as assault, 5 years for spitting? 3 games in prem?

The beauty of sunday league football is that any average Joe can pretty much find a team to play for. Unfortunately the standard of refereeing is also at the same level.

Therefore, plenty of bad tackles etc go missed and players tend to get away with murder at times. You also get the sort of officials that book players just because they feel like it, again, it's all about standards. Low level of football, low level of officiating (at times). Some refs are good though, dont get me wrong. These are the ones you will see on a Saturday as well (Senior league and above).

Regardless, a yellow is a yellow, and a red is a red no matter what day of the week it is. If the referee feels like being leniant he can do so at the end of the game when he decides whether or not to send the booking/red card into the LFA.

You can't take your shirt off without getting booked, you can't double foot someone without getting sent off, those are the rules, the rules are there for a reason. Don't break them and you'll avoid a fine, it's pretty simple.

If you can't play football without abiding by the rules, then stay in bed on a sunday morning, it aint your sport pal.

a ref should always send in a yellow or a red. if they are thinking whether to do so or not at the end of a game then they are liable for a county suspension and fine.

and I wonder how many clubs bother to mark a referee under 60 and therefore write a report if they think they have had a (below) average ref who has let players get away with murder. many times I have heard clubs say 'we'll just give him the lowest mark possible before we have to write a report because we can't be bothered to'

Well we all know that refs dont send in every red and yellow card. Come on Polska be honest with yourself.

didn't say they didn't, but just saying it can be costly. As I know at my own expense!

there is still a clear set of rules for grassroots, they are just not applied consistently by referees; players who think they know best (you can't ban me from Saturdays if I don't pay my Sunday subs) and managers/coaches who are ill informed. The FA are really clear about how many matches you miss for a red card and most fines are consistent with the level of sanction.

And I hear a lot of clubs think that there's no point in submitting a report as often it's not obvious that anything has been done about it! If the league can prove that reports are followed up then I'm sure you'll get a lot more fly your way!

I'd rather they didn't keep reporting me thanks Katie

then don't moan that we don't send reports in!!!!

I was referring to clubs I hear talking when calling their results through...

haha will let you off then! Think you've only reffed us once, maybe twice since we started!!

Katie G wrote:

there is still a clear set of rules for grassroots, they are just not applied consistently by referees; players who think they know best (you can't ban me from Saturdays if I don't pay my Sunday subs) and managers/coaches who are ill informed. The FA are really clear about how many matches you miss for a red card and most fines are consistent with the level of sanction.

And I hear a lot of clubs think that there's no point in submitting a report as often it's not obvious that anything has been done about it! If the league can prove that reports are followed up then I'm sure you'll get a lot more fly your way!

Beautiful springs to mind.

county fa employ some refs knowing that they will dish the bookings out, some are even under orders to target certain clubs

booking charges will never go down

as yazz would say THE ONLY WAY IS UP

County FA nor Alliance League have ever instructed a referee to target certain clubs,,,,I would appreciate evidence of this as I would take it on myself to challenge this with the FA,, if evidence does exist.

I think we should have a disciplinary points table! I'm pretty sure we would be way out in front!!

going for the double this season then Rich?

I personally wanted the fair play award but can't see that happening! [b]

it's saying something when I don't need to ask your number 16 his name to caution him!

Hands off you!!! Haha!

I was hoping to see a new stand at Holmes park with the words "sponsored by afc royal oak"

Wud not of surprised me!

Polska legend II wrote:

it's saying something when I don't need to ask your number 16 his name to caution him!

surname begin with a d (or e)by any chance..?

A fair play table would be good, i think we must have a chance. We have had about 4 yellows this season, and we have had Clive ref us, so that's an impressively low number

4 yellus from clive in 1 game, now that is impressive.

and I didnt book a NRI player that time anyway so none of the four are mine lol

yes clive is very much card happy!

oh here we go
gunner 2 first post,,,obviously just signed in under a diff name