Mooch & Gooch See Red

A perfect fall night for a soccer game...it was cool and clear and as the Orangemen assembled at Bryant Alternative School to play Alianza...one of the Grey Divisions teams coming back from a suspension after fight and an altercation with the ref. Their manager game me this description of what happened the night that led to their suspension.  Here are his own words

“We've got a history of rough (in all senses of the word) games with [the team we played] -- and this one fit that pattern and we strongly and vocally disagreed with the ref's calls almost from the beginning of the game and would not quiet down about it. He showed at least 4 of our players cards for dissent -- including 2 of them who got red cards. We apparently weren't interested in getting his message that he wasn't interested in our opinion of his calls. I don't think there were any cards for anything else other than dissent, but a large majority of our players thought that there should have been -- for rough and late tackles by [the other team]. Game ended in some sort of scrum that involved a lot of vocal disagreement both between our players and [the other] players and between us and the ref. Scrum started after one of our players was tackled -- our guys thought deliberately and from behind. Ref saw it differently and intended to restart with a drop ball. Game never restarted. Apparently quite a few folks puffed and feuded, the ref left, and then everyone else went home. No one got hurt, but apparently punches were thrown and there was a whole lot of fussing.

Having played in our games against [this team] before I'm very sympathetic to the ref. He was probably in over his head and our persistent, vocal dissent only made things tougher since it sounds like it made him increasingly upset (and perhaps even less prone to make some calls -- not sure since I didn't see it).

Certainly nonstandard, but I think the best available option would have been to simply walk away from the game. We didn't.

Ref's report showed lots of cards to Alianza, none to [the other team]. [They] reported that the scrum at the end was driven by them needing to defend the ref from our players. I think that was both a distortion and exaggeration of what actually happened, but that's what they reported. Bottom line, ref's report included the fact that he felt threatened. Hard for me to imagine anything went (or would have ever gone) beyond verbal with the ref -- for the record it didn't, but the fact that he felt threatened made the league's choice to suspended us from play for 3 weeks quite understandable.”

I’m not wanting to take sides here but typically where there is smoke there is fire...we are playing in a league where we all have to go to work on Monday. We have to play physically and mentally in control. I am proud of everyone on the team who has heeded my warnings and kept themselves in check and not escalated the tension on the field, despite questionable calls by the ref and actions of questionable sportsmanship on the other team. We haven’t had an incident many weeks...until tonight which unfortunately sets our Number of Days, without a Sportsman Incident back to zero.

But first the game...tonight we brought our A team for sure. We had plenty of defense, midfield and firepower. And it showed. Although we lost the match the score was 0 to 1. Our best showing in many weeks. Because we were loaded with talent, some of our organization broke down...as we didn’t need a back line of 5 defenders. Many times during the game our two sweeper were actually playing forward of our three stoppers., essentially leaving out two outside stoppers, back to sweep. This is not the formation...sweeper sweep. Stopper stop. As it turned out, Alianza only goal came as a direct result of this confusion. Since our new formation is primarily a defensive formation, when we bring a extremely talent defense to the pitch, we might revert back to one sweeper to avoid any confusion, and keep the sweeper back to sweep. We shall see. 

Overall the game was a tremendous battle. And very fun to play and watch. Mooch spent most of his time watching as for the second time in 40 years he got hit in the eye with the ball. The first time was a few short weeks ago. This proves statistically that the probability of getting struck in the eye with a soccer ball while on the field of play is exponentially distributed.

As we all know, toward the end of the game we suffered a “Red Card”. Gooch aggressively pursued one of the big Alianza player out of bounds. It didn’t look all that dangerous as Gooch wrapped his leg around the other players right on the sideline. Gooch actually suffered more from the incident by losing his balance and tumbling out of bounds. The ref showed him a yellow card, which seemed appropriate for his last second lunge, and nothing more. The yellow card means he would have to sit out for 5 minutes. As Gooch was walking off the field the Alianza player who he fouled, reached up and touched Gooch on the side of the head with an open palm. Misinterpreting the player’s motion as a slap or a smack, versus a brotherly open hand touch on the face, Gooch turned and aggressively advanced on the player attempting to slap him on the head with his open palm. The ref immediately ran over. The altercation ended immediately and the ref issued Gooch a red card and sent the Alianza player to the bench to cool down as well. The Alianza player immediately came to our bench to explain that Gooch misinterpreted his gesture. This should be a lesson all around. It’s best just to keep your hands to yourself, until we shake hands at the end of the match.

Because of the Red Card, Gooch, will suffer a single game suspension.

Gents...as the season draws to an end...I appreciate everything you’ve done to keep in under control...please continue.