Aggressive ref instigating reactions for social media?
To start, refs have thankless jobs and do receive unnecessary abuse so I’m all for them having boundaries and control over game situations.
Without getting into details - ran across an overly aggressive ref towards only one team’s parents at a recent younger tournament. Started with a very stern warning to only one side’s parents before game and ended up with a parent ejection. Details are even stranger after the ejection and left all the parents with odd feelings about the incident.
Find out a few weeks later the ref has social media feeds with either body cam or secondary videos of reactions to his calls. His bio even uses wording that clearly indicates he’s posting out of control situations. Needless to say, the incident was posted, heavily edited to highlight the parent’s reaction (not the refs odd repeated instigation even after the ejection), and included outright lies about the situation.
This now feels like purposeful instigation for “content” at a little kids soccer game. Ideally, no one would have taken the bait, but humans are humans and one got pulled in. Now knowing this “content creator” was reffing the game, I can’t be sure that controversial calls weren’t part of the deal - consciously or subconsciously. All in a U9 game.
Anyone encountered anything similar? I have no issue with the outcomes on the field of the tournament, but feel like the $ spent and experience was ruined by an ethically dubious situation.