SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Girls Varsity Soccer SC 4A Girls State Championship game

Dale, you should go to a refereeing class. The AR will not run with the ball out of the box when it is cleared. The AR will stay with the second to last defender. At the point right after the goal was scored, the second to last defender was the keeper. If it wasn't a goal, the AR would not have run up the sidelines like he is taught to do.

Are you referring to my post? If so I am not sure you read it correctly, I said "Mann could not find the net" I do not think that is implying that it was not our fault, it most certainly is. We should have put that game away in the first part of the first half when we had three shots to Lexington's 0.
Shots on goal Mann clearly dominated that stat. You got Lucky. Period. Luck that is all it was, not skill, if it was skill that ball would have hit the net and we would not be talking about a line and picture of the goal post etc.

I was at the game yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was quite impressed at the level of the game, as I've only ever seen a handful of girls games at the 3a level, and it's just much lower than yesterday's game was.

Mann definitely had more of the ball, but apart from corners, they really didn't fashion many clear cut opportunities. Lexington, while they defended for large parts of the game, always looked dangerous when #13 got on the ball and #10 or #12 ran off her. I was also extremely impressed with #14 for Lexington, who absolutely shut down Mann's fast right wing all game.

That being said, how anyone could say Lexington just got lucky is beyond me. You don't keep a team like Mann to one goal with luck. You do it with organization, work, heart, and hustle. And Lexington had the perfect attackers to just play counter-attacking soccer.

What I saw was 2 great teams with contrasting styles playing yesterday. And the more defensive-minded team won. And personally, I like that for the same reason I loved watching Simeone's Atletico Madrid beat Barca then Bayern in back to back UCL matchups: because there is an art to defending deep and countering quickly with pace, just as there is an art to keeping the ball and moving it around to open space to exploit.

Congrats to both teams and thanks for a great match for us spectators.

THE GOAL WAS A LUCK GOAL..... Lexington played well. I said that in my earlier post but the game winning goal was a luck goal. Lexington's coach was very prepared to shut down Mann's ammunition.

There are certainly a lot of opinions, assumptions, and rhetoric on this board about the goal. The problem is that those are not facts.

I took the time to analyze the digital imagery using high-tech digital measurements to seek out the actual facts.

Fact #1: The ball has a diameter of 9”, which is standard. Of course, who knows what the Rawlings ball is???

Fact #2: The goal line is the black line and measures 4” wide as measured from the available digital media imagery posted on this board

Fact #3: The ball can impact the white area beyond the goal line by a distance of less than 4.5” (the radius of the ball) and not be a goal as the entire ball would not have crossed the goal line. See image below.



Fact #4: The goal posts are not aligned properly with the goal line as evidenced by this digital imagery and are approximately 2" behind the goal line.



Fact #5: This misalignment of the goal posts backward increases the distance the ball may strike within the white area and still not be considered a goal to a minimum of less than 6.5” because the entire ball has not cleared the imaginary line between the goal posts. See image below.



Fact #6: The distance between the back of the black goal line and the black crumb flying into the air where the ball struck is 4.8” as evidenced by the image below. This image was blown up to the individual pixel level to be able to accurately measure the distance.



Conclusion: If the goal posts had been properly aligned the goal would have been a good goal; however, since the goal posts were not properly aligned and extended backward off the line, the result is no goal.

The margin for error on the officials making the correct call here is very high with only .3” separating goal/no-goal based on the line; and, that margin becomes even higher (actually it becomes 100% margin for error since they called it a goal) when the goal posts are accounted for and the fact that the AR was not in a good position to see the play down the line.

I believe that now, this puts this goal/no-goal issue to rest since the facts, not opinions, clearly indicate that it was not a goal.

Given the complexity of this decision and the fact it ultimately decided a championship after 104 minutes of a very tough match for both teams, there is no way the officials could have seen with absolutely certainty to the extent acceptable to call this a goal. The AR was about 35 yards away and a good five yards off the goal line , which would radically skew his perception of the play. I do not know a single person that could determine the correct call with a margin for error of about 9/32 from that distance and angle. And yet, notwithstanding those facts, he still clearly and repeatedly indicated no goal. Somehow though, that did not matter and they got it wrong. The whole situation was handled very poorly.

Which, goes back to my original point that this crew performed absolutely horribly regardless of the outcome. That is what is getting lost here. Poor decisions, out-of-position, improper performance of duties, failure to properly inspect the field…the list goes on and on. There needs to be inquiry and there needs to be consequences.

This is 100% inaccurate. FIFA law 6 clearly defines the role of the AR in the scenario that occurred...stand ground, raise flag.

So you are assuming that these refs knew what they were doing. Watch the footage. Look at 7 minutes into overtime and tell me she isn't holding the Mann girl in the box to keep her from the break away toward goal. It should have been a penalty kick. Get back to me on the rules.

Find away to see the foul stats and see how one sided it was the whole game. I believe in the rule book it also states to call a consistent game with no favoritism.

Haha, you just showed the FIFA laws of the game.....this is NFHS, totally different. Get an NFHS book, and show me where it says that.

Sometimes a team fouls more than another. I'm not going to make up calls to "even" out the fouls. Are you even being serious here? You sir are a joke....and from an outside perspective are just making your team look like a bunch of whiners and sore losers. Just saying....