The Referee

Tuesday Night I was Assistant at the Setanta Shield game between Alfreton & Hucknall.   This was a local derby with an extra spice as the Hucknall manager used to manage Alfreton. The game was a typical local derby with plenty of incident.   

The first half went by quickly with Alfreton taking a 1-0 lead in at the break.  They took the lead after 7 minutes.    Hucknall did “equalize” midway through the first half but it was disallowed for a push on a defender.     I didn’t have a great deal to do in the first half, there was only one offside I had to give.   The ball got put in to the box by the attacker and seemed to hang in the air for ages, before it came to the attacker who had come back from an offside position.

Second half got of to an eventful start.   I had signaled for a push out on the wing and while I was monitoring the wall and getting it back 10 yards.  A punch was thrown by a Hucknall player in the box and he was sent of for Violent Conduct.  Not surprisingly after this the game picked up a notch and there was plenty to keep us busy.   

 In the last minute of the game a challenge went in by an Alfreton player over the far-side from me.   Straight away both sides came together and I moved in from my position to get a better view.  Nothing happened in this confrontation apart from a lot of talk.   Unfortunately though the infringing player was lost and wasn’t coming forward.   So unfortunately we had to restart with a free kick and no caution for the player.

Its disappointing when something like this happens, you think could we have done something different, however we cant guess in these situations.