Subject: Captains
A question posed by a referee from cyberspace:
I had a situation last weekend in a U14 boys travel game, where at
halftime, I approached a referee (I was coaching at the time) about not
letting my captain communicate with him about cheap shots from the other
team behind the refs back. The referee started in with "There is no such
thing as speaking captains; get it out of your head, blah,blah,blah.....".
As a ref I always instructed the captains if they have a question or
problem I will listen providing the way it's presented to me. I also do NF
(high school) games (that's where I started with having speaking caps). I
assumed this would be good game management with travel games also.
NYWest SRI Dave Wolgast replies:
Whereas the National Federation rules recognize the team captain as the
only player who may request interpretation from the referee, the Laws of
the Game make no such mention of the captain (no mention at all if memory
serves me right). The captain exists purely as a construct for getting the
coin tossed.
That being said, as a point of technical reference only, effective game
management requires that the referee be approachable while keeping a
professional distance. Since "the captain has no special privileges,"
managing the game well means that the referee should respond firmly and
politely to ANY reasonable request or question from a player, captain or not.
When a player says "Hey ref, #7 has been grabbing my shirt the entire
game," consider the difference in the following two retorts by the referee:
"You just play...I'll call the game."
OR
"I'll keep an eye out for it...Thanks."
Whether or not the referee intends to actually "keep an eye out" is moot.
He has likely made more of an ally by using the second response. That's not
to say that the referee should allow himself to get manipulated by whining.
The referee needs to be sensitive to when players
have actual concerns and when they're playing games.
Our former chapter President, Warren Musselman adds a few more thoughts on the
subject:
An additional point that can also be helpful: While captains have no
special privilage under the Laws of the Game, they can be a useful tool to
a referee. A polite and professional request to a captain to assist in
controlling a team or particular team members who have exhibited behavior
the referee wants to control can be good preventative officiating. This
confers no special privilage on the captain, it simply uses the
leadership that a captain is expected to have within his team.