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If one tries to play the Canadian game like the American game then there will be a LOT of two-and-out situations and it ruins the game (IMHO).
Since highschool ball came back to Kelowna I've noticed that the coaches have started to Americanize their play selection at the community ball level. There arefewer backs in motion, maybe a shifting player, we never see slots in motion, almost all the teams have gone away from onside players on scrimmage kicks, and fancy offside plays downfield have gone away. In fact, the following two situations happened this year:
1) A coach for a team of 10 year-olds (Canadian rules) had to be asked to leave because he was so hard on the officials. He decided to take in the games as a fan and berated the side official, calling myself a terrible official claiming that we 'didn't know a damn thing about the game of football' because we let the running backs go in forward motion prior to the snap - he was downright indignent. He was also asked to leave the park.
2) A coach for a team of 14 year olds went up one side of me and down the other because I let the kicking team advance a legally recovered free kick. I know nothing about NFL or NCAA so this may hold across the board, but at least in NFHS the same play would have been blown dead when the kicking team recovered.
And this was just games that I was working. This has all happened over the last 4 years. I don't actualy blame either game for what I'm seeing on the field. Coaches get their inspiration where they will. Due to the success of the CFL over the last year I expect to see a lot more exciting play locally in the Canadian rules since more coaches will see the plays that you can do in Canadian ball and will let the kids do some trick stuff that can be pretty exciting.
This problem is regional, incidentally. I don't think it's just regional to BC either where we have an obvious cause for the Americanization of the Canadian game. It is my opinion that the excitement of the Canadian game depends entirely on how much influence coaches get from the American game.
Importantly, it does the kids no favours [note the correct spelling of the word 'favour'] to be trying to plug a square peg into a round hole. There is prescious little we can do about that tho as officials.
That's my two bits on the matter.
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