Brotherly Love/Fatherly Rage

I guest-coached my older son Alex's travel soccer game today and they were short-handed (short-footed?) and so my younger son Ian had to guest-play on the team to give them 11 players; we were in North Plainfield, playing a scrappy Hispanic team and there was only one ref instead of the usual three, and this ref pretty much took a laissez faire approach to calling the game (except offsides, he called a goal back on a play that was clearly not offsides) and the other team took advantage of this-- they elbowed, grabbed, tossed, and two-handed pushed our players often (frequently after the play was over) and when our sweeper was grabbed by the shoulder and chucked and then the ref called a penalty kick on our team, I ran out onto the field to complain and he immediately red-carded me and sent me packing . . . I then had to get phone updates and watch the game from afar and it just got worse and worse, one of our players got elbowed so hard it bruised his ribs, and the opposing coach screamed at him to get up and insisted he was faking the injury and delaying the game-- at this point, our team was ahead 2 - 1 but the other team had 18 players and our 11 were exhausted and banged up, and the attack was pretty much relentless, corner kick after corner kick, cross after cross, and then my younger son Ian got two-handed shoved to the ground by an opposing player, and his older brother Alex ran to his rescue and punched the kid in the stomach, and a general melee erupted, the opposing coach ran onto the field and may have pushed one of our folks (a high school senior that was running the lines, a sibling to our sweeper) and, luckily, the ref actually listened to my younger son when he explained what happened and give the kid who pushed him down a yellow card . . . and moments later, the ref blew the long whistle to signal the end of the game, an epic and epically ugly win for the Eagles, with no subs and a lot of insanity (and I will say that after the game, the North Plainfield parents that I talked to were quite nice and quick to forgive me for getting a red card-- and apparently they apologized to our parents for some of the rough play on the part of their players-- and they certainly understood just how high emotions run during a soccer game, but I'm going to really try to calm down and take some deep breaths-- God only knows if I'll even be able to coach my own team tomorrow, or if I'll be suspended or something).

12 comments:

rob said...

this might be the first sentence where i wished there was video to accompany it

kevy said...

Oh, Dave...

zman said...

I'm always amazed how riled up people get over soccer. Is it even a real sport?

Dave said...

there IS a video-- haven't seen it yet but one of our parents took video of the game in case we need it as evidence as to how insane it was.

alex went to a birthday party later with some of the soccer kids and i dropped him off and the kid who got chucked to the ground and then had a pk called on him thanked me for standing up for him to the ref (despite the fact that i got ejected). it was really nice of him (though i told him i should have stayed calmer). catherine said it was best i got ejected because she nearly went on the field and started throwing punches when ian got thrown to the ground and the melee formed around him and alex rushed to his brother's rescue and punched the kid in the stomach. she said if i was there, i probably would have punched someone and gotten arrested. it was that ugly. and a good lesson for the kids: you can endure physical abuse and beat a better team, even when the ref is calling nothing, if you just park the bus and play for counterattacks.

i also have to emphasize how nice the other parents were-- they were just sort of like "this is how soccer is . . . violent, crazy, emotional and insane"

Marls said...

Why did you deal the need to point out the other team was Hispanic? Kinda Trumpian.

zman said...

Would Latinx be better?

Marls said...

Bad hombres

Dave said...

mainly because the team was from a soccer culture and knew how to foul and their parents made me laugh in their acceptance and apologies for the insanity, and they had no real issue with my ejection and were good sports about the loss-- though their team dominated the match, because if you know soccer, these "park the bus" victories are part of the game. what a mess. i think i'm suspended for several games, depending on how the league views the whole thing . . .

Dave said...

also, i need to brush up on my spanish. a lot was going on between the ref and the other coach that i couldn't follow. when i got carded, our goalie tried to smooth things over in spanish with the ref (to no avail) but i may need to take a spanish for soccer coaches class.

Marls said...

Sounds like you need to teach your players to foul better

kevy said...

East Brunswick always adds a one game game suspension on top of the league's suspension. I will recommend to the principal that you serve it proctoring PARCC

kevy said...

Agree. I thought that yesterday. Remember, though, Dave is 48 now...

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