A recent assessment and brought my attention to an area of my game which I have not paid a great deal of attention in the past, this is the action to take for a Corner Kick. In the past I have either taken near or far post positions and waved over to the player to take the kick. Although following discussions with various parties I have come to the conclusion there is more thought required to the actions of the referee.

There are two main matters to consider 1) where to stand and 2) what to do when we get there. This obviously depends on whether or not you have assistant referees.

Without assistants the job is made harder as you have job of ensuring the ball is placed correctly, controlling the players prior and post the kick being taken and checking for the ball crossing the line.

Positioning the Kick

The first area to consider is the placing of the ball. Checking the ball is placed correctly can be done from a distance, I do not believe you need to be too pedantic here as long as the ball is there or thereabouts as there is little advantage to be gained by the attacking team. There is more to concern yourself with.

Managing the players

In recent times the penalty area prior to a corner has been turned into some sort of gladiators arena where all the players want to stand on the same blade of grass. I went to a recent North Western Trains league meeting, where a video of the World Cup was shown. In the video there was the usual pushing and shoving in the penalty area and the referee halted the taking of the kick to admonish a couple of the players, if we did this early on in our games would we stop this behavior at subsequent corners? I'm not sure, but I do believe it would certainly help if the players knew the referee was not going to stand for the usual pushing and shoving at corners.

Prevention of incidents occurring

The other area to concern yourself with is the attacker standing on the goalkeeper. I have certainly seen this tactic used in many of my matches. Here the attackers will position themselves, although one player, usually the biggest will stand in front of the keeper, with the aim of stopping the keeper getting to the ball.

Since I have been considering this part of my game an incident of this nature happened to me quite recently. I was standing on the front post for the corner, and a player was stood directly in front of the goalkeeper, I said to the player, so that everyone could hear, "your not going to impede the keeper are you?" The corner then came over and sure enough the player stood in the way of the keeper getting to the ball, I blew up, following which one of the players team mates turned to the player and said "you stupid idiot he told you not to do that."

The corner is also a break in play, which you can use to your advantage, you can use it to talk to players, take a little heat out of situations and perhaps introduce a little humor. By talking to the players at this point you can warn them that you are watching them and perhaps prevent incidents occurring.

Positioning

There are three matters to consider when deciding your positioning 1) am I in the best position to spot any fouls which occur 2) can I see if the ball crosses the goal-line, 3) am I varying my position so that players are not aware where I will stand. Without assistants, in my opinion this means either the front or back post (2/3) you can always move out a little as the arrows indicate to get a wider view. For here you can spot the ball crossing the goal line as it comes over from the corner, easily view players trying to foul the goal keeper and have a word, if necessary before the corner kick is taken. A mistake I have made is just to use the front post or the back post it is important to vary your position between the two.

With assistants you should be on the far side of the penalty area to your assistant. When the Kick is being taken from position 1 in the diagram below any of the positions¸ 3/4/5/6 would give a good view, from the positions on the edge of the box you may walk in to obtain a better view as the kick is being taken. As players are not static when a kick is being taken why should the referee be?