Match 15 - Cripps vs Rutland

Two freshers teams for me today, as Cripps had arranged a match against Rutland to take place just before exams began. I called a halt to my revision and headed down to University Park to referee it. I usually mention the weather in my reports - well in this game we had heavy downpours and bright sunshine all thrown in!

I thought Rutland had the better of the opening minutes, yet it was Cripps who took the lead. It came from the first free kick (some 9 minutes in) - the Cripps player took a shot, and the Rutland keeper parried it into the path of another Cripps player who had the simple task of scoring.

Rutland had a good side - in fact the two teams were pretty evenly matched. I tried to set a fairly low tolerance on fouls - getting all the late challenges but letting some of the more minor physical contact go. And of course I tried to keep the game flowing by playing advantage - as usual this worked better in some situations than in others. Cripps had a couple of penalty appeals but I turned them down.

We were limited to 40-minute halves, and the game continued apace after the turnaround. Rutland got their equaliser in the 54th minute, an audacious shot from the right hand edge of the penalty area - I'm not sure if it was intentional or not! The game passed without incident for the most part - of course I missed things and got things wrong, but not that influenced the outcome. I turned down virtually all the appeals for handball on the grounds that players were having the ball struck at them rather than deliberately handling it.

With a pretty frenetic 80 minutes coming to an end, and the scores level, there was, as ever, a decision to make. With no-one else coming to use the pitch, we settled on two ten-minute halves of extra-time, which were just as even and couldn't separate the teams. And so it was to penalties.

For the first six kicks, the two teams had an identical record. Rutland took first, and their first kick was saved, before the Cripps player blazed over. The next four each were all converted (some more easily than others!), taking us to sudden death. Rutland's player hit the bar with his kick, leaving Cripps with a great chance to secure the win, but the Rutland keeper managed to pull off the save. Rutland converted their seventh kick, and the keeper again came to their aid in saving the next Cripps kick, giving Rutland a 5-4 win on penalties.

Altogether, I enjoyed the match as ever, a pretty even encounter between two well-matched teams. I tried to let the game flow while clamping down on the worst of the challenges - and there were a few late tackles. However, the players were all quite happy with my handling of the game - I think they were happy just to have a referee! I was also amused by the Rutland player who was clearly more used to playing rugby - he is the first player in three years to have called me 'sir'! The game was a nice break from revision, and I'm sure there will be a couple more games to follow after exams.