New Guy From Canada
 

Hi there. I'm new to this message board.
I've been a Football Official in Manitoba, Canada for 11 years now http://www.mfoa.mb.ca. I've worked Midget (15-17 year olds), High School, Major (18-21 years old), and as the support official (yardsticks) at our Professional Football Team's Home Games.
I've been reading some of the rules questinons that have been posted here, and have been trying to relate them to the rules I understand. The problem is I'm having a bit of trouble with some of the terminology being used. In Canada we have Team A and Team B, but we don't have Team A/K and Team B/R. I assume Team A/K is the kicking team, and Team B/R is the return team.
Next month, I'm travelling to Quebec, Canada for the Football Canada Cup http://www.footballcanada.com. It is a National tournament featuring some of the best Under 17 and Under 19 football players in Canada. I will be working the Under 17 tournament. I'm really looking forward to this as this is a prestigious event in Amateur Football in Canada.
I look forward participating in many discussions, and learning the differences and similarities between the 3 Down game, and the 4 Down game.

Welcome aboard! JugglingReferee is another canadian official who posts often on this site. You are correct about K and R being the kicking and return teams. Things are a bit slow right now, but will pick up throughout the summer.

A couple of other links to officials discussion boards you may want to look at are, http://www.nfhs.org/cgi-bin/ultimate...?ubb=forum;f=9 which is for national federation ball only, and http://www.refstripes.com/forum/index.php#1 which has NF and NCAA discussions.

Thanks. I'll be sure to check out those sites as well.

Besides the "advertised" differences, there've long been little "gotchas" distinguishing the USAn from the Canadian codes. I'm not up to date on either, but here are a few little differences that were still in effect last I heard:

The Canadian snap has to be between the snapper's ("centre's") legs, the USAn doesn't have to be. Canadian rules also specify "toe to heel" for the direction of the snap while the USAn rules don't use that language, but considering the requirements of stance, I don't see that making a difference.

Awards of possession of a loose ball that becomes dead out of bounds are different. In USAn football, last touching is never relevant, which makes some calls at the sideline much harder because player possession must be determined. But not having to see touching makes some calls easier too.

You probably know about the fair catch, but there are also associated "opportunity" provisions applied to team R even on free kicks, and the terms differ between different USAn codes. On free kicks, team K has a greater choice of kicks they can use; IIRC the Canadian codes now allow them to kick from their choice of points between the hashes, but it was decades later that they got that choice than in USAn football.

Lots of different provisions re handling of scrimmage kicks, and the differences have even been growing a little lately, as NCAA & NFL have recently banned some versions of what you'd call "open field kicks" that were legal for a long time in those codes. Paradoxically, at the same time running punts have become popular, increasing the chance of your having to make such a call!

USAn football uses a few fewer enforcement spots and distances for penalties. You'll never have to do a 3 way comparison to determine the enforcement of a 25 yard penalty at various distances close to the penalized team's goal line.

The USAn wing officials have it easier in not having to watch defensive linemen for "illegal procedure" -- except in the NFL where rules have recently been adopted re moves close to (as opposed to in) the neutral zone by team B to draw A's charge. But instead of "putting up the gates", there are a lot more things to watch for re substitution procedures.

In general, the differences between the 3 major codes in USAn football are many compared to the few between amateur and pro in Canadian football. Not only that, but various circuits in the USA playing rules based on one of those codes will add their own differences. And the coaches often honestly are confused by those differences. There's a fair number of inadvertent whistles caused by an official's working a game under one code and the next day a different one.

Robert

Welcome to the site.

Hey man, nice to see another Canadian on the board.

I'm from Ontario like most of the Canadians here, is this your first Canada Cup, if so...it's a lot of fun, I did a few of the U19 round robin games and the U17 final back in 2005, had a really good time. I wanted to put my name in to go to Quebec but I couldn't get the time off work :(

Anyways, nice to see another Canuck around, who knows, maybe we'll run into eachother at some point.

Is that kinda like killerwhaletank? :D :D

I guess the rest of Canada has not discovered the Internet yet.:p

Actually this is going to be my second Canada Cup. It was held in Manitoba last year, so I got to work a couple of games. However this will be the first time that I've travelled out-of-province for games.

I had the pleasure of attending the Blue Bombers training camp today to work as an Official for their Inter-Squad scrimmage. Even though it was a practice, the game is much more fast at the Pro level versus the Amateur level. It was definitely a good practice for the season, and to get me thinking about mechanics.

hey
 

Nice to see another Canuck on here, especially one from the West. Welcome. I am on and off in here.

I'm also on http://www.refstripes.com/forum/index.php#1 under the name of Toba52.