With an apparent and understandable shortage of refs, I am usually just thankful for my team's games to have refs. Certainly some seem to do better jobs than others but for the most part I think most, if not all, of the refs I have seen are trying to do a good job. Like MASH said in a previous post, so many of the calls are judgment calls, so you're bound to have a lot of critics.
I would rather have a ref that is "hypersensitive" than one who is letting too much go. In a recent rivalry game I heard fans from the opposing team encouraging their players to "take number 'so and so' out!," as in "injure her so severely that she can't play anymore!" Fortunately, the opposing players in this case didn't seem to adopt this mentality, but I have seen players that have. For this reason, I'd rather have a ref who goes out of his way to protect the players, even at the risk of being called "hypersensitive." It's obviously not fair for players to be "taken out," and it's also not fair to the players to have to play IN FEAR of being "taken out." Just my opinion.
I also happened to see the recent BC/Airport game in which the ref was described as "hypersensitive" in The State
Newspaper. Ironically, the one call that stood out in my mind was one in which a yellow card was given for a play that I thought might have warranted a red, for reasons mentioned above. A player (looked to be intentionally) took down an opposing player with the ball from behind. She then (it looked to me like she went out of her way) deliberately stepped over the player crumpled on the ground, glaring at her as she went,as if to possibly be saying "take that." I could be mis-interpreting what I saw but that is what it looked like to me. Maybe I am the one who is hyper-sensitive. I thought a red would have been in order, whereas the ref only gave her a yellow. Players need to learn that being in the heat of battle, even in a heated rivalry game, is no excuse to recklessly injure another player.
