After Santiago Hirsig was sent off for Kansas City in their match against Chivas USA over the weekend, commentators Max Bretos and Christopher Sullivan were getting mightily bent over the softness of the second yellow. But Steve Davis saw the same thing I did:
Later, Anno seemed to count "one, two, three" as he showed Hirsig a second yellow. That would be OK, of course, as persistent infringement is surely a cautionable offense -- except that Hirsig had committed just three fouls the entire match, with his previous infraction coming in the 13th minute.
Watching the match, I was building up a rant of epic proportions about how Bretos and Sullivan didn't once comment about the counting, as persistent infringement is something not a lot of announcers seem to understand one bit. Kind of like red cards. And handballs. But as Davis points out, it didn't hold up under scrutiny. Still, I would think that might have been deserving of a mention from the guys in the box, but maybe Sullivan was too busy interchanging and overpronouncing foreign names. There's a drinking game in there somewhere.
Back to Hirsig, though. If the only real avenue of appeal for red card suspensions is "mistaken identity," could Kansas City use the videotape of Anno counting off these alleged fouls to make a case?
I didn't see the game in question, but I can certainly understand a viewer's frustration in not knowing why a caution is shown. I also know the frustration of not knowing or incorrectly presuming to know, as an announcer.
But there's a nuance to persistent infringement that may apply to this situation, that is, a referee may show yellow if he/she feels a player has become the "target" of his/her opponents, by virtue of fouls committed by a variety of players.
In that case, the referee may choose to caution the third (or fourth) different player to foul the "target," in hopes of ending that team's gang-like effort toward the player.
That explanation may not apply here, but it's worthy of consideration.
According to what I was told by people in the Wizards front office, the foul was not persistent infringement, it was instead a reckless foul card.
@Chris -- On the one hand, you're right and I forgot about the "persistent infringement by committee" part of the rule. But on the other hand, the matchtracker said it was only the first foul of the match suffered by Sasha Victorine, so that doesn't work, either.
@Mike, that's what I gathered from the match report. I'm just saying what it looked like on the telecast, and the persistent infringement thing is something I've seen missed often, so it's more that I'm taking this opportunity to rant about it.
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