Firstly I would like to say that I believe most refs do a great job under, sometimes, extreme pressure and I aplaud their dedication.
I play in Masters 5 myself and as such we do provide our own refs so it is always a real bonus when we get a real ref.
This rant though is about my 12 year old son's game (normal 13th grade not promo) where the other team brought along a real ref who was the father of one of their players. This was to be a good thing for the game, or so we thought. This ref started by enforcing throw ins very harshly which was good. Unfortunately the same could not be said for off sides when it was his sons team. The first 2 (both of which they scored from) could have been honest mistakes if he had left his glasses behind, but the 3rd one (and the goal counted) had the player standing next to our goalkeeper which Mr Magoo would have seen.
This sort of thing happens,but something I had never seen at this level blew us all away. Our 12 year old striker collided with one of their players near the start of the game and was spoken to and GIVEN A YELLOW CARD.
Later on in the game one of our players had beaten the defence and was one on one with the goal keeper just outside the box when he was hacked down from behind in the most obvious professional foul I have seen at any level. The ball was at least 1m in front of our player and so there was no way it was anything but deliberate. Was the player red carded, yellow carded, or even spoken to by this ref? Not on your life.
Most Children at this stage are still honest when they play and it is a shame that a trained adult could be so biased as to run a game this way.
I can remember two instances of bringing in proper refs for junior games i played in (13th/14th grade i think) due to the parents of a couple of teams being notoriously bad at reffing the first time we played them. I also remember both proper refs being incredibly biased both times as well, one said before the game that he wanted to send off their keeper because he didnt like him (which he did), and the other was our junior club coordinator who sent off one of the opposition parents because he offered to do the line, but our ref ignored his offside calls and awarded a couple of goals. He did his block and was sent off the park (the same guy from the first fixture who made us get a ref in).
So I will ask, did you guys piss off anyone earlier in the season by any chance?? Would explain why the ref was so biased towards the other team. Not that im condoning it or anything.