Question:
Interesting thing happened here 2 days ago. 2 Select teams wanted to have a scrimmage with a referee crew. The game showed up on the assignor’s list as a regular game and she booked a crew for it. During the scrimmage the game started to get out of control and the referee sent off one of the players. Many questions: should a referee accept an assignment for a scrimmage? Is the referee covered by insurance? May cards be given at a scrimmage? If they can, where does the report go and what should it say? Will the player sent off have to sit out another game? The assignor said she might not have assigned a crew had she known it was a scrimmage that is a non-sanctioned game. The teams maintain that since they are sanctioned teams the referee is covered by insurance but I don’t know. I think I would have left the field once informed it wasn’t a USSF sanctioned game. What would you do?
USSF answer (November 19, 2007):
If the scrimmage appears as part of the regular assignment process and is listed by the league assignor, it should be considered by the referee to be officially sanctioned. The teams did not call the referees directly to make the arrangements, but went through the official assignment procedure with the league assignor. Now the answers to the remaining questions follow naturally.
