Soccer Tournament

We spent the entire day on the football pitch watching our grandson playing in a soccer tournament today.
The 8am game was warm and wet (a very heavy dew) - the 2:45pm game was Bloody Hot but at least it was dry.

The officiating in both game left something to be desired.
However, the early game official has no business trying to claim to be a referee - he was atrocious and completely biased in favor of one particular team.
The afternoon game's official let some things go but called many penalties (more than were warranted but he did so more or less evenly).

As a former player and official I was appalled by the first official's total lack of knowledge of the game and bias and tried four separate times to lodge a formal complaint with the tournament body only to have them run off in another direction or try to pawn off my concerns onto some 'non-existent' person 'in charge' of officials who never seemed to be on the pitch the entire day.

So if you or your child ever have occasion to be at the Akien South Carolina Soccer Tournament be aware it is poorly run all around and the officials -if you can call them that - are not going to call a fair (or any resemblance of fair) game should your child play on a team not of their liking.

As to the grandson's team - having only played one game prior to the tournament together as a team they did considerably well against their early opponent and the referee. Although play that appeared to be 'forced and nervous' at the outset of the match wasn't helped by the illegal play of their opponents (such as handling the ball -literally, pulling players down from behind by grabbing their shirts, and so on) and bogus calls from the official they still managed to keep their opponents to two goals despite the best efforts of the official to run up the score.

In their later game the nervousness disappeared but play digressed for both teams as fatigue and the heat took it's toll to where the match ended as nothing more than everyone clustering around the ball and kicking - an ugly sight to any player, especially those on the pitch at the time but with temperatures above 90F and having played all day it was bound to occur.