Game
27, 2016-17
"November seems odd," Tom Waits
once sang, and the gravel-voiced troubadour would have had his suspicion
confirmed if he'd shown up to watch this gravel-pitch game on a still, grey,
dying day in the year's eleventh month.
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| Failed sobriety test (pic: Referee Tales) |
The first thing I notice is how crooked the
freshly painted touchlines are. I'm about to ask the groundsman if he can
quickly re-do the goal-line, at least, when I smell his breath. It's 1pm on a
Sunday afternoon and he's already shit-faced - very slow to move and barely present
in thought. I stick with what we have (see pictures) for fear of getting
something worse.
The two teams are second and third bottom,
but both are near the top of the Fair Play table. Only one red card between
them all season. Should be a quiet game, I think. Stupidly.
Want to read more? Click here to order Reffing Hell: Stuck In The Middle Of A Game Gone Wrong by Ian Plenderleith (Halcyon Publishing), published on August 8, 2022.
Kenneth1 December 2016 at 03:11:
ReplyDeleteYou should have autographed the cards. Great story for future generations. When I was a lad there was this foul mouthed ref who sent off all these blokes for time wasting in one of my dad's team games. Here are the real cards. Great photos too.