This blog is dull. Thank fuck for that at last!

Games 23-26, 2023-24

Let's be honest. No one would watch a soap opera where everyone gets along just fine. We wouldn't pick up a novel where the characters all lead wonderful and fulfilling lives, and no one ever gets sick, dies, or maltreated by fate or fellow human. We wouldn't bother going to the theatre to see a play called Sunshine, Love and Happiness unless we were expecting a high dose of irony. So I must apologise. This blog's becoming dull, and I really hope it stays that way.

I refereed four games this past weekend, and the weather was ultra-Novemberish throughout - very windy, with periodic rainfalls and temperatures dipping down into single figures. Cycling against a head wind to my fourth game on Sunday afternoon, though, I was struck by a delightful realisation. In spite of the weather, I was looking forward to the game. I started to laugh. Just imagine - for the first time in years, I'm glad to be refereeing.

The stats below tell the story. Four games, with a sole yellow card. It was for dissent in a boys' U15 game, handed out for a second offence after a verbal warning. There was no great drama involved. The dissent was born of frustration, and the caution was accepted without protest.

The away team had raced into a 4-0 lead by half-time, and much to everyone's surprise - home players included - the host team turned it around in the second half, finally scoring the winner in the game's last minute. Their untrammelled joy made you glad to be there and part of a thrilling game. The home team will be talking about it for years to come, especially the lad who scored the winning header from a corner kick, completing his hat-trick and sealing the victory with a twist of the neck and a well-executed nod on leather.

No coaches complained. No one shouted from the touchline that I was shit (or, if they did, I didn't hear it). One player said, "Really, really well reffed - thank you," and they weren't being sarcy. One coach who came to pay me was in a bad mood after his team lost 5-0, but apologised and clarified that "it's nothing to do with you". Well, that's good to know. I didn't offer him the consolation that at least he had plenty to work on at training this week.

I also coached a young ref doing his first game. He's the fourth successive teenage referee over the past few weeks to give me hope for the future. Smart, articulate, competent and curious, he had no trouble at all taking charge of a U11 match-up. He asked me what level I referee at. I explained how I'd recently asked to be taken off men's and U17/U19 boys' games. "You can do that?" he asked. Well, as I've realised, no one can force you to do something that you don't want to. I was expecting to be assigned no more than a couple of games a month, but on both Saturday and Sunday I got phone calls asking me to jump in and referee a second game at the last minute. When things stay this quiet, I'd happily ref half a dozen games every day.

It's wonderful to no longer dread doing the hobby I love. As long as that continues, this blog will be updated on an occasional basis only, which is surely a relief to us all.

Game 23: 5-4 (1 x yellow)
Game 24: 0-5 (no cards)
Game 25: 21-0 (no cards)
Game 26: 1-1 (no cards)

My book 'Reffing Hell: Stuck in the Middle of a Game Gone Wrong' documents six years of whistling torment, tears and occasional ecstasy. Please buy a copy direct from Halcyon if you would like to support this blog and independent publishing.

Dark times: shitty behaviour, Part 379

Games 18-22, 2023-24

My new quiet refereeing life without men's or boys' U19/U17 fixtures started well when I reffed a mainly peaceful girls’ U17 game the weekend before last. It was a warm Sunday afternoon and I had no plans (Mrs. Ref had a friend in town), so I hung around to see how some of the young referees were coping with the kind of game that is mercifully no longer part of my life.

I watched the second half of a boys’ U17 game where the teenage ref was yelled at constantly by both coaching teams, and by the players too. The more he got yelled at, the less interested he became in doing a good job, and his body language indicated that he would rather be anywhere else but here today. I know this feeling well. You stop caring, because whatever call you make, someone's going to be upset at you. The players' behaviour deteriorated to the point where I was worried it was going to end up in a mass fight - there were some really shitty tackles going in from both teams. And all I could think was, "Christ, I'm glad it's him out there and not me." After the game, he told me he was quitting (he’s been refereeing for a year). I suppose I should have encouraged him to think again, but I just said, "Don't blame you, mate."

Calling the cops to ensure a safe passage home

Games 15-17, 2023-24

Let's jump to Game 17. It was already over two weeks ago, but it's taken me that long to feel like writing about it. For the first time ever, the police were called to one of my games. If we want to put a positive spin on it, I suppose that's not bad going after 15 years.

It was a one-sided boys' U19 game of parsimonious quality but the usual lavish amounts of fouling, moaning and mutual disrespect. In the first half, there were nine cautions for 'tick-them-off' stupidities - kicking the ball away, failure to retreat at a free-kick, a square-up involving the away team's number 3 (relevant for what happens later), and several over-the-top fouls, including one by the away team's number 8. Following his yellow card, he gets into a shouting match with several of his opponents and is immediately subbed out by his coach. Thank you.

As we walk off the field at half-time, I make a loud appeal for both teams to focus on their football in the second half. I might as well have been asking them to put their their mobile phones in a locked box until they'd read and memorised the Complete Works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The tone of the game is no different, and although the home team is dominant, they're also dirty too - two players get sent out for five minutes for reckless fouls. When one of their forwards fouls the previously cautioned number 3 with a quarter of an hour left to play, the victim comments that if he gets fouled again, "I'm going to break someone's foot".

The Adventures of Captain Striker, Episode One!

Games 12-14, 2023-24

Captain Striker is a fucking hero. He must be, because he's both the captain and the striker. The bossman goal-notcher. The big cheese leading the front line, also adorned with a special armband with a CAPITAL C (for... Captain, of course!). He's shouldering so many responsibilities - to lead his team, to set an example, and to score the goals too. That Captain Striker is only playing at level nine must be some kind of terrible mistake. It's likely the football establishment has been plotting against him, but Captain Striker knows adversity and will not abjure the struggle.

I'm just about to blow the whistle to start the game when Captain Striker, standing right in front of me, asks for an extra few seconds to say "my prayer". I'm tempted to tell him he's had several hours already to say his prayer, but of course this is not about the prayer. Captain Striker is testing the waters to see if the referee harbours the necessary respect for him and his footballing superpowers. He closes his eyes and murmurs. I really have no choice but to wait for him to finish before we can all start the game.

Later, I wonder what his prayer was. If he was appealing to his Gods to finally make this the game when he didn't behave like an irritating, temperamental, belly-aching pain in the passage, then the prayer went unheard. If he was praying to be suddenly blessed with clinical finishing skills that would permit him to score an unanswered double hat-trick, then sadly that plea was also ignored. However, if his prayer went something along the lines of, "Dear invisible and unknown entity, please once again make me the biggest fucking twat on the field of play by a colossal margin", then there is indeed a power somewhere above with the magical ability to turn requests into reality.

Captain Striker's chief asset is his loud and rowdy gob. At first, it's aimed at his fallible team-mates, who

The Playmaker who can't play, won't play

Games 9-11, 2023-24

Game 9 (Friday night). There's a lump of shit on the field. It's the away team's number 10, who plays absolutely shit, and acts like an absolute shit. But he's consistently shit. Every time he gets the ball, he passes to an opponent. For a playmaker, there's one principal deficit here - he can't play. He has other skills, though. When I blow up for a foul against this dirty, foul-footed bastard, he yells in disbelief. When I blow for a foul against any of his team-mates, he yells in disbelief. When I don't blow for a perceived foul on one of his team-mates (you'll be guessing the outcome by now), he yells in disbelief.

Yellow-card scoreboard...

You can try talking to players like this, but you're wasting your breath. When you tell them to be quiet they think you're inviting them to a dialogue about this or that decision, which obviously I fucked up on. Every time. And the Non-Playmaker has a glassy expression when you try to look him in the eye and reach what might pass for his brain or his soul, or even a small, concealed part of his personality that's not shitty to the core. He's not interested, and looks past you, while continuing to whine about the unconscionable wrongness of your officiating.

"There's really something wrong with you tonight, isn't there?" It's not me who says this to the Non-Playmaker, but one of his opponents. They also complain, but their complaint is that the other team won't stop complaining. After more yellow cards than I can count, I just ignore the away team. It's a game of 1001 fouls (from both sides), with a lack of collective sporting ability one of the few discernible features alongside grunt-swollen square-ups, compulsive shirt-pulling, deliberate trips, hostile fans on the touchline, and the away trainer jumping up and down like he's working off years of frustration for being small, bald and stupid.

Abandoning a 'friendly' match due to the threat of violence. But who cares?

Game 8, 2023-24

It's only three months since a young man was killed on a football field just a couple of kilometres away from today's U19 friendly. The 15-year-old player took a punch to the back of the neck during a tournament at the end of last season, fell instantly into a coma, and died a few days later in hospital. The local football community expressed its collective shock and dismay, but for those of us refereeing on the morally rotten front line of the amateur game, the tragic outcome was the logical consequence of football's utter failure to address the issue of embedded verbal and physical violence.

Time to finally shelve The Shankly Quote

Did this mean that clubs have started the new season with a different attitude? A perhaps more reasoned, respectful approach to their opponents and officials, and one less influenced by foul tactics, dangerous tackles and instinctive confrontation? Did it fuck. And that's why I abandoned the game after 75 minutes following a mass confrontation on the pitch. I wasn't prepared to watch the threat of impending violence translate into another death.

Upset about nothing

Games 5-7, 2023-24

My hobby is upsetting people. I don't mean that I set out to upset. It's not my hobby in itself to upset people. It just so happens that what I do in my free time makes a lot of people angry. I know this makes no sense. I know that I should seriously consider finding another hobby. I don't like upsetting people.

Game of Rage

In Game 5, I upset the home team's captain. Fifteen minutes earlier, I was shaking his hand and agreeing that we wanted a nice, calm game, because it's a friendly. Both sides are near-neighbours and will be having a barbecue afterwards. Unleash the doves of peace! And yet here he is, yelling in my face. What have I done to upset him? I blew my whistle and gave a penalty to the other team, just because he up-ended an away team forward who was shaping up to shoot. I'm five yards away. Only the captain complains, loudly and in my face.

And yet, if I hadn't called the penalty, the other team would have been upset. It's so hard to keep everyone happy.

Pre-season friendlies usher in the first storm clouds of dissent

Games 1-4, 2023-24

Game 1: We've played seven minutes of my first game of the new season before I reach into my left pocket for a yellow card. The away team's number 7 has been called up for a clear handball. He protests loudly, then kicks the ball away. Time to set an early signal...

Forgotten something, old man?

Hang on, where are my cards? At this second, I realise that I've left both of them in the changing room. Good start to the season, ref. No early signal after all, except to signal that my mind's going, one day before my 58th. birthday. What should I do? Should I just hope that there are no cardable offences for the next 40 minutes? It's a boys' U17 game, so that's very unlikely, as I've just seen.

I let play continue with the free-kick. Five minutes later, there's the first goal of the game. I run off the field, and fortunately the groundsman with the key to my changing room is sitting right there. He lets me in, I grab my cards, then run back out and blow for the re-start as though nothing unusual's happened, even though everyone's staring at me and wondering what the hell I'm doing. Three minutes later, the number 7 commits another foul, and quite a nasty one at that. This time he gets the yellow card he deserved five minutes ago.

“Ref, WHY WON'T YOU TALK TO ME?”

Game 48, 2022-23

Boys’ U19. A messy game. Tons of yellows for all the usual shite (fouling, howling, hacking), three time-penalties, and two reds. So much to process, so let’s just look at the two dismissals.

I check the two teams’ recent form and disciplinary record. The game’s a dead rubber, but that doesn’t mean it will be a quiet night. The away team won last week 8-0, but had a player sent off close to the end of the game when they were already eight goals to the good. “How did that happen?” I ask their coach before I start my warm-up routine.

“Ah, yes, that’s our number 10. I subbed him out and he said something to the referee, but I’m not sure what.” I say that at least he won’t be playing today, because a straight red card means a suspension. “Actually, he is playing today. The referee never filed a disciplinary report.” (Cheers for that, dear colleague.) Well, I respond, please make sure to let him know that I won’t be tolerating any such antics. The coach assures me that the player will be on his best behaviour, though who knows how good that best behaviour is.

At half-time of an already dirty spectacle (five cautions in the first 45 minutes, four of them to the away team), the number 10 is subbed in. He’s inconspicuous until the 70th. minute, when he’s fouled and tripped while dribbling the ball in his own half. He’s ignited, so stands straight back up and shoves his

Referee's Bingo - a game within a game

Game 47, 2022-23

In my head, I've been playing Referee's Bingo for years. During the course of 90 minutes, certain aspects of a game are destined for repetition, week after week. The stands may be empty, but there's almost always a Full House. Sunday's match proved to be another one that scored high. Let me share with you my Bingo Card.

Time to play...

* Passing the ball around at the back for the first two minutes. Do we have to? Every week? Yes, I know, the players are getting a feel for the ball, and that the two teams are sizing each other up. But why can't we just skip this bit and cut straight to the first long ball in the third minute? You wonder if the coaches discuss this beforehand - a mutual deal to make themselves look like Pep. A poor man's, 9th. Level tiki-taka. Please let it be over. Oh, good, the big number 6 has got bored as me and welted it down the pitch. BINGO!

* A perfectly good goal, followed by an outraged defender appealing for offside. In the 16th. minute the away team's number 10 runs on to a through-ball, dribbles round the keeper and scores. The home team's number 8 is incensed. Not at his own poor positional sense and lack of speed, but at the referee. He screams from somewhere deep inside of his soul: "Referee! Fucking hell, that was offside!"