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WARNING: This is a basketball thing, won't make sense to many. Just wanted to vent a little so I can get it out of my system.

Ugh. Just reffed a yucky game. To be fair, I am not the super-duperest coach in the world..... but I'm not crap. I am competent.

But any time you ref basketball the hardest thing to call is the fouls, because to an extent it's a bit subjective. A little bit of contact is allowed, but you have to draw where the line is .... and you have to do it almost instantaneously - not time for reflection.

And I'm a bit slow at that! So, I generally don't call as many fouls as I could, and if you run into the right combination of teams they can start getting a bit tetchy and overly physical with each other as the game goes on....

The young girl I was reffing with wasn't too bad - but she made one strange call that our coach disagreed with (and I did too, actually). One of our girls went to block a shot, the shot went in but on the follow-through she hit the player's arm. The ref called that the basket counted but the foul was after the shot so they got the ball at the side. I said to her that I'd give a free-throw because the foul was committed in the act of shooting, but she insisted it was AFTER the shot had been released .... and she was a young girl and I didn't wanna over-rule a call so I said, 'Ok then - your call.' But I think after that our coach was on the war-path a bit, being very difficult.

The first half was fine. Then in the third quarter it got yucky. The coach from our team, and his son, were yelling at us refs from the sideline..... the girls were getting called for fouls and then bitching about it, and giving each other little pushes.

The coach's daughter got called for two offensive fouls by the other ref (which I thought was fair enough - she was putting the shoulder in out of frustration) and she got very aggro. A few plays later she pushed a girl over and for a few seconds all hell broke lose (ok - slight exaggeration - but we're talking about a team that in the past I have called my Mini UN because they're so cute and lovely).

Two girls from the other team (a private girls' college, would you believe) came running over to confront her..... I actually had to pull them apart and blow my whistle lots!

I had one of those 'Hmmmmm..... so much just happened in a few seconds that I can't quite figure out what to do....' moments....... So I just recommended to the coach that he take his daughter out because she was losing her cool and gave the ball to the other team.

After that we called every bloody foul we could lay our eyes on and both teams got in the penalty pretty quick.

But it was ugly basketball.

I don't think the coach from our school likes me much now :( Oopsy daisy. Couldn't wait for the game to end. I don't think anyone was enjoying it by then.

I just hate it when sport's not played in good spirits. And I hate when I feel like it's party my fault for not controlling the game properly. And I hate when I feel a bit off-side with people from my own school. It's not a positive way to spend a Friday night.