Ugly game questions

[Chess Ref]

Originally Posted by Rufus

My partner and I had a very similar situation in a boy's JV game. Very ugly. At half-time the varsity guys were giving us some pointers on handling this type of game. The one that stuck out the most was to talk to the players during a dead ball/free throw. Something like "C'mon now, you all can play better defense than this. Let's try and clean it up." We used it in the 2nd half and things did clean up a bit, but it was probably coincidence.

This advice strays into coaching vs. officiating realm, but as long as it's said to both teams in a non-threatening way that doesn't imply "and if you don't clean it up, we're going to..." I think it's worth trying. This doesn't relieve the officials of calling what they see, just as you said you did, but is another thing to try and get them to play a little cleaner.

the whole talking thing doesn't seem to be my style. The following is an example of how my talkin to them has gone.

Ref : Let's try and take this to the end cleanly.
Player Hears : He thinks I'm dirty
Coach: Why are you telling my players they're playing dirty


Assignor Calls: what did you say to players ?

Yada, Yada, yada.

Player has a question I probably have an answer. But I getting further and further away from sharing my insights on the state of our game with them.