Rolling over

On the last Sunday in November I had the pleasure of refereeing a Morden & District division 1 match (sorry to boast).  One of the teams could only muster 9 players at the KO.  I was informed that a combination of circumstances had prevailed to bring about this sorry state of affairs.  The major problem had been a 21st party on Saturday night to which many of the team had gone - it appeared that some were still there!

The other main reason was that although the team had 21 players registered, because several do not get a regular game they had lost interest and, would now only turn up if promised a start.  This match ended up being abandoned very early in the second half when two players were injured, reducing the team to 7.  The first problem will, thankfully, never go away. The second problem should be able to be addressed at local level.

I believe that at the junior level, we should be able to use rolling substitutes.  I would suggest that we could have three or four as the agreed number and that as long as we did not have more than eleven players on the field at any one time the clubs should be free to bring players on and off to suit their needs. Such changes always being made with the referee's knowledge and on an agreed signal from him/her.

All the players who it was intended to use should be named prior to kick off - all of them should be considered as players for the full ninety minutes of the match, thus simplifying any discipline procedures.

The benefits of such a system would be to ensure that all those selected get used, which would help keep the interest of some of the not so good players. This would also enable some older players to continue longer in the game knowing that they could take a breather every now and then. Injury time could cut down as any player needing time to recover from a knock could be replaced, knowing that five minutes later he could be back in the match.

All the recent law changes have been made with the professional game in mind, the most glaring of which are the pass to the keeper and the keeper holding the ball for 5 to 6 seconds.  These work well at the higher levels but are a complete nonsense on the park.  The result of first of these is that any parks players in a tight situation where he would have passed back to his keeper now kicks the ball miles of the pitch - this wastes far more time than the back pass ever did. As for holding on to the ball the keeper will just leather it up field, or again out of play to buy time.

I think we need to sit down and think about the needs of the grass roots of our national game, if we don't there wont be many roots left in the not to distant future.

John Brown