We had a game several weeks ago that had the potential to turn ugly, but due to the example set by our coach it ended well. When we arrived for the older flight 1 game we were told there were no refs so it could only be a scrimmage. About 10 min later while the players were still warming up a ref arrived, I saw him speaking to a parent of the home team so assume this parent must have known the ref, gave him a call and he got to the field in minutes. This ref wasn’t planning on referring a game that morning but was needed and came even though he knew it was an older team and there would be no ARs, thank you ref. Early in the game there was an offside call our players didn’t agree with, as soon as they expressed this our coach shouted out to them “Have respect, he is on his own”. Immediately the players settled down. Later in the game a goal was called off for the player being offside, even though this was on a throw in. As soon as the ref blew the whistle you could tell he knew he had screwed up but as the whistle came a fraction of a second before the ball crossed the line there was nothing he could do. There was certainly grumbling by the players and spectators, but I think our coach’s earlier reminder to show respect kept it to just grumbling. I believe a coach can have a great influence on the attitude of a team if he/she consistently leads by example. By the way we ended up winning the game and I do realize that it is much easier to be forgiving when you are ahead but I still think our coach deserves credit for setting an example of accepting this ref was on his own and mistakes would be made.
