The Moaners in the Snow

Game 9, 2018-19

It's snowed all morning, and I hold off leaving the house in case there's a late call to postpone the match, a lunch-time kick-off in the City B League. It isn't that I necessarily want the game to be called off, but the prospect of several hours of unexpected free time on a Sunday afternoon has its attractions.

Just about playable, with help from a shovel.

So because I leave the house later than usual, and cycle at first to the wrong ground, I end up arriving cold and wet with just half an hour until kick-off. There's half an inch of snow on the grass pitch, but both teams are eager to play. "Have you got an orange ball?" I ask after looking at the surface, which is moist underneath. They do. Will they promise to play sensibly and help me out with touchline calls? Oh, of course.

Things start gently enough as the players adjust to the conditions. There are numerous short passes that get stuck in the snow, and several players from both sides flail for balance and slide around on their arses. I wonder whether or not it was wise to let them loose. The home team goes 1-0 up after 15 minutes with a penalty for a full-on foul by the away team's captain. He's the only one who bothers to complain, citing the word "body", which you hear a lot. It translates as, "Football is a physical sport, so what's wrong with me recklessly charging into a player and flattening him?"

Preparing for teams with atrocious disciplinary records

Game 8, 2018-19

A freezing night, a cinder pitch, and a relegation battle in the city's A League between two men's teams who are not only very low in the standings, but last and fourth-last in the disciplinary table. Between them, they've managed 16 red cards this season (eight apiece), with the home side racking up six straight reds and an almost impressive 57 yellows in just 19 games. 

Home team's appeal: "Fair Play - also applies
please to PARENTS and FANS. Thank you!"

I spend the ride to the ground pondering the best way to broach this in my pre-match speech. Sometimes I think about saying nothing at all, and that instead I should try and come across as silent, stern and unapproachable. I used to know a ref in the US who'd come to games glowering like a pensioner at a swingers' club, wearing a hoodie and dark glasses and looking like he was about to discharge a semi-automatic on both teams (always a possibility in the US). He was told either to quit or drop the attitude - he was scaring the kids, and the parents too.

I'm not much good at looking like the hard man, though. My first instinct when I meet the coaches is always to smile, introduce myself and shake their hands. No one likes an asshole, and why get things off on the wrong footing? So as we line up to take the field I give them my usual speech about my invisible linesmen and add, "By the way, I've seen the Fair Play table and it's an ugly sight. So, for God's sake, try and play football and enjoy the game." Cue shit-eating grins from both teams.

Grown-ups in a mass brawl - thanks for setting an example, dear parents

Game 7, 2018-19

I'm back at the club whose name translates as 'Friends of Sport', where in almost four years I've never yet had a sporting or a friendly experience. Where to begin? It was a boys U17 game, with around 30-40 spectators. I'm just going to translate a truncated version of my disciplinary report, seeing as it took me half of Saturday evening to write. 

He's got something to say,
and he's gonna say it...

"The first half was played in a fair and peaceful atmosphere, but all this changed in the last 20 minutes of the game when both sides - with the score at 2-2 - sensed that they had a good chance to win. In this increasingly hectic and niggly phase of the game there were six yellow cards and a time penalty due to reckless fouls, unsportsmanlike conduct, and dissent.

"The coaches remained quiet almost until the final whistle, and indeed from my point of view there had been no controversial decisions. Then, in the 79th. minute [of an 80-minute game], there was a reckless foul by the away team's number 23 against the home team's number 7 right in front of the away bench. The number 23 received a yellow card for the foul...

10 things amateur referees hate to see or hear

Games 5-6, 2018-19

What are the 10 things I least want to see or hear when I'm refereeing a game of football?

1. The shout for "Offside!" almost every single time a forward is through alone on goal. It comes from the defenders, it comes from the coaches, it comes from the spectators - a one-word vocal plague of ignorance upon the amateur game. During Saturday's game, a goalkeeper saved a free-kick and then complained that the player who followed it up to score was offside. How did he see that when he was saving the kick? He went on about it so much (and I tried to ignore him, but he ran after me almost all the way to the half-way line screaming, "Offside! Offside!") that he ended up with a yellow card.

2. "You have to call fouls against both teams!" This usually comes from a losing coach or one of his players. Oh, really? I thought I was just supposed to call fouls against your team as a heaven-ordained test of your patience...

Praise from the touchline - for my footwear

Games 3-4, 2018-19

After a long period out injured, you tend to lose a grip on your confidence. What if I’ve forgotten how to ref? It’s not that you can no longer remember the Laws of the Game, but you worry that you might have lost the feel for officiating. When players pick up on a referee with a confidence problem, they will not hesitate to exploit their mental frailty.

"I am not Dr. Brych, I am a human being."

So I precede Sunday’s game in the Men’s Punishment League (see blog entries passim) with a new, truncated version of my pre-match speech, delivered in a 'we're all in this shit league together' tone: “Lads, my name is not Dr. Felix Brych. I’m not here today to be yelled at and moaned at. I don’t have linesmen, and I don’t have a video ref. So especially on close offside decisions, save your breath. I want you to enjoy the game, but I want to enjoy it too. Best of luck.”

There’s always a share of players smiling when I try this ‘Referees are human too’ approach...

Returning to a Referee's Paradise

Game 2, 2018-19

Pretzel and Coke - essential
ingredients in a referee's paradise

On Saturday, I think that I've fallen asleep and transmigrated into a Referee's Paradise. I officiate a game where no one complains. Neither the players, the coaches, nor the spectators. Not even a whisper of dissent aside from a fleeting gesture of frustration at a called foul. And then, after the game, everyone thanks me for turning out. Because this is U10 boys' football.

I'm not supposed to be refereeing at all as I'm still officially out injured - I've been earmarked to coach a young referee who, as young referees will, drops out late on the evening before the game. So I step in, happy that I can take such a stress-free game to get back into the swing of whistling. (How that phrase makes refereeing sound like a carefree, happy-go-lucky activity - like chopping fire-wood or going for a country walk on a mild afternoon.)

Before kick-off I stand at the half-way line waiting with the away team for the home side to come out of the changing room...

Time-wasting and dissent - new laws for Fifa to consider

Happens too rarely - yellow for time-wasting

"Before taking a throw-in, free kick or goal kick, adjust your sock. And then adjust your other sock," a professional coach I used to work with in the US once told my eldest daughter's team. It was advice on defending a narrow lead in a recreational league. The players were 14 years old.

Like the perpetual sore of dissent, tedious time-wasting has become deeply embedded in football at all levels. There are sanctions to punish both, but they are not strictly applied because referees do not want to look overly officious for handing out serial yellow and red cards. The more that dissent and time-wasting have become an accepted staple of football, the harder they've become to punish.

Right after this summer's World Cup, the editor of Germany's kicker magazine, Rainer Holzschuh, wrote a series of proposals to counter time-wasting and unsporting conduct. Here's what he wrote in the July 16th. edition:

Same old shit - opening game is my closer

Game 1, 2018-19

All through Friday night's game I had 'Someone Out There' by Rae Morris going through my head, but it should really have been a much uglier song, by Eels. So instead of hearing a recurrent, "Someone out there loves yoooooo" through 90 minutes, I'd have been mentally singing to myself, "I'm tired of the old shit/Let the new shit begin."

Rae contends that someone out
 there loves a referee. Somewhere.

It's a 'friendly' game between a level 8 men's team and the U19 squad of the city's third largest club. The lads are a step quicker and smarter than the men, and so the latter - who are knackered after 30 minutes - resort to fouling, and then moaning at me when I call them out. The game becomes fractious and there are already three yellow cards before half-time - one for dissent, and two for unsporting behaviour when two players square up to each other and refuse my suggestion to kiss and make up. So far, so predictable.

There are two archetypal incidents for football at this level...

The Greatest Goal Never

A World Cup short story by Ian Plenderleith, presented by Referee Tales

Some people say that being a referee is like working in the sewers. No one wants to do it, and all you get is shit. And yet, some of us are willing to muck in where it stinks. Where there's nothing to see and smell but a torrent of human effluent. Yeah, you're welcome.

    Let me say from the start that I was sent home from the World Cup for doing my job properly. That’s the truth and the whole story in one short sentence. There is not a single piece of cinematic or photographic evidence to even suggest that I made the wrong decision. And that’s because I didn’t make the wrong decision. Ah, people say, but you couldn’t have known that at the time. Well, of course I couldn’t have known for sure at the time. It was a very close call. But every replay, no matter how much you all wished it otherwise, proved beyond any doubt that I was right to raise my flag. Each time they re-ran it, frame-by-frame in the slowest of motions, the pundits reluctantly reached the exact same conclusion. The decision was correct, and no one can ever take that away from me.

Every week another asshole

Games 47-48, 2017-18

The first half of this boys' U15 game is the most peaceful I've refereed all season. There are only two fouls, and a mild query from the away team about a possible offside on the home team's first goal. As is often the case, the defenders have turned around to see that a player with the ball has outsmarted them. I tell them that he wasn't offside when the ball was played, and we get ready for the re-start without any further discussion.

Their coach is much more vociferous. From his ideal standpoint 50 yards from the play I hear him yelling. I ignore him.

Always worth reprinting this one.

At half-time, with his team 3-0 down, he walks over to me and starts complaining about the offside decision, and not in a civilised way. "It's because I'm a shit ref," I reply mildly. He hesitates for a second, then starts to moan about something else, but I interrupt him and say, "I told you already. It's because I'm just a shit ref. What can you do about it?" Then I walk away to my changing room (broken into during the first half, but nothing taken because I hide my phone well and never bring my wallet with me when I ref).

Missing, presumed dead - Fair Play

Game 46, 2017-18

The home team in this boys' U17 game is bottom of the league with six points, and bottom of the Fair Play table with many more. The two often go hand in hand - the team currently at the top of this league is also first in Fair Play. There are obvious reasons why a well-disciplined XI performs better on the field.

Slogans with good intentions -
but they change fuck all.

I talk to the home side's coach before the game. He explains that he only took the team over two weeks ago, and is preparing them already for next season. "Things have been a bit chaotic," he says. And when the game starts, you can see why a change of coach was necessary. Their understanding of the offside law is non-existent, and their position in the Fair Play standings truly reflects their sourpuss, foul-based approach to football. Again, what a privilege to referee such a game for €14.

Stormy skies, multiple reds and murder

Games 44-45, 2017-18

It's quiet and sultry in the park, with death and distant storms in the air. Two teams of men lazily warm themselves up for the 1pm kick-off. Four days earlier, just a few hundred yards from where we're about to play sport, a dog-walker found the body of a 29-year-old woman. Life must go on, though - this end-of-season dead rubber at the middle to lower end of the city's bottom league abjures all musings on mortality. After all, there's 13th place to defend.

"But ref, I was trying to play the ball!"

It doesn't take long for the afternoon to plummet from meaningless kick-about to a prolonged and rabid expression of collective outrage. It's all my fault, of course, when in the ninth minute an away defender chooses to upend the home team's forward, who's through on goal in the penalty area and about to shoot. It was I who personally wrote the rules saying that the denial of a clear goal-scoring opportunity is a red card offence. And no, there was no attempt at all to play the ball, which was far beyond the lugging defender's reach. It was a cynical, calculated trip.

The red-carded player and his team-mates all surround me, shouting and gesticulating...

"We could either be nutters, or a club where you can bring the family"

Game 43, 2017-18

Just over a year I wrote about a game where I red-carded three players from the away team on a particularly hostile afternoon, even by the standards of this region’s amateur leagues. Last October I reffed them again, with barely a problem aside from one yellow card for dissent. Yet while they had become more sanguine, they had crashed to the bottom of the league, having no points from 13 games, with an impressive Goals Against tally of 106.

Time for a change.

This past Sunday I was assigned to ref  them once more, on a well-kempt grass field surrounded by four steps of terracing. A beautiful little football ground on a stunning afternoon. Meanwhile, the team has undergone its second complete transformation in just over a year. They’re good again (having soared up to second from bottom with 21 points), but still calm. “They’ve got eight new players,” the opposition’s low-key coach tells me before the game, resigned to the fact that his side is meeting them just at the wrong time – as they're hitting form.

Video evidence should prompt reform of the offside law

I once wrote a short story narrated by a linesman who disallows the best goal of all time. It's a slick, 33-pass move, followed by a mazy, Messiesque dribble, then an audacious cross that ends with a spectacular, Ronaldoesque overhead kick. The linesman flags for offside, and the TV replays prove him correct. But only by a negligible margin of an inch or two. His decision is spot on, according to the rules, but he's globally vilified for being the man who cancels out what is inarguably the most brilliant move in the history of football. 

Lines the linesman cannot
see. Do we need them?

This story rolled around my head and was forgotten long before the introduction of video evidence, but now its moral again seems pertinent. In the Bundesliga this season, goals have been celebrated by fans, only for their joy to be annulled minutes later by a cold, factual look at the video evidence. Most famously, Cologne's very late 'winner' against Hanover was (correctly) overturned for offside by the video referee, while an earlier incident when a Cologne player was erroneously called offside in a goal-scoring position was ignored - presumably because it would have been impossible to bring play back (one of many flaws in the video evidence system). 

A weekend of strikes, anger and disappointment

Games 40-42, 2017-18

After more than a month off refereeing due to a combination of bad weather, illness and holidays, I was set to return to the field this weekend. Then my refereeing body called us out on strike (youth games only) to protest a physical attack last week against one of our members during a boys' U17 game. Nonetheless, I was still in charge of four games this weekend, one way or another, and all of them reflected to varying degrees the still toxic football atmosphere in my city.

The time has come...

I supported the strike and the reasons for it, even though the action was not even discussed (let alone voted on), as it should have been, at our monthly referees' meeting last Tuesday. Not all referees  supported strike action, but you had no choice - if you'd been assigned to a youth game, you were now automatically withdrawn.

On Friday evening, before the strike has started, I ref a boys' U17 game. The home coach introduces herself to me one minute before kick-off, just as she's bringing her team back in from warming up. "Kick-off's at six," I say, pointing out that the away team is already out and ready. She shrugs. I add that I have plans tonight, looking at my watch, but I might as well have been reading her the Confucian Classics in their original Chinese. We kick off eight minutes late.

At half-time, though, she's much keener to talk, appearing at my changing room door with her team 0-3 down. "You need to watch out for offside," is her opening line, with courtesy still far from being her strongest point...

The problem with teenage boys...

Game 39, 2017-18

When I was a young father people used to look at my daughters and ask me, “Don’t you ever wish you’d had a boy?” I used to reply with a short and truthful “No,” while resisting the urge to tell them to shut the fuck up insulting my children by implying that they’re the wrong sex.

Pelé and Garrincha - you have to
 be about this good to skip training.

“Well, wait until they’re teenagers,” these fatbergs of wisdom would knowingly fart on. “Then you’ll wish you’d had boys.” It turned out they were wrong again. And having coached and refereed teenage players of both genders, and having once been a teenage boy myself, I can only feel grateful for having avoided living with these fluid-shipping, hormonal wrecking balls masquerading as the Lord of the Big Fucking Cock. 

On Friday I tell three players on my U15 team they can’t play at the weekend because they missed both training sessions last week, and didn't take the trouble to let me know why. One immediately texts and says he is sorry, but he’d been injured. The second eventually calls and sort of apologises. The third one writes in the team’s WhatsApp group that we will surely lose because now “shit players” are getting picked ahead of him, the standby Garrincha...

Why do I referee?

Refereeing at the amateur level is a barely compensated activity that affords us much loud and personal abuse, and often provokes the question among friends, relatives and neutrals: "Why in the name of all that's profane do you spend your weekend doing that?" I have no idea, is my stock response. Joking aside, though, I really have no idea. That is, when I look at it dispassionately sitting safely at my computer terminal. In reality, I'm no closer to giving up than I was the day that I started nine years ago. 

This week I was interviewed on a number of football-related topics by Mike Woitalla of Soccer America, who asked me about the difference between refereeing in Germany and the US, my favourite idea for a change to the Laws of the Game, and why I referee at all.

SOCCER AMERICA: You've been living in Germany now for three years after living 16 years in Washington, D.C. Anything you miss about American soccer -- as a writer, fan, coach, referee or soccer parent?

As a referee and coach, I miss the generally calmer atmosphere of U.S. youth soccer. In Germany, it's always intense, at times intimidating, and occasionally downright violent -- in both youth and adult soccer. I'm trying to inculcate the importance of sporting values to my boys' U-15 team -- getting them to stay calm when fouled, or to shake the ref's hand at the end of the game, for example. It's a more or less permanent struggle. In my first year as a referee here, I almost quit several times. Now I've developed a very thick skin and write a blog to offload and have found that's really helped, but the change was a huge culture shock for me.

SA: If you could change a rule in soccer, what would it be?

Ten-minute time penalties for dissent. At the moment, the rule is a yellow card for "dissent by word or action," but it's only enforced in the most extreme cases. If I cautioned every case of dissent in my German amateur league games the field would be deserted after 30 minutes. I'd love to see referees respected as they are in rugby -- a single word to the ref and you're out to the sin-bin. If rugby players can do it, soccer players can learn it too.

SA: Why did you start refereeing and why do you continue?

For one season, my eldest daughter was on a travel team in the U.S. (she hated it and went back to rec) and they needed parents to train as assistant referees, so I volunteered. I was assigned to a tournament and really enjoyed it, so I straightaway trained to become a center ref too, and quickly realized that after more than 35 years as a player I didn't know half of the Laws of the Game (like most players). Despite the abuse, I'm in my 10th year of refereeing, and I keep doing it because I love being out on the soccer field -- most days, it's where I feel like I belong, where I'm happiest.

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. 

The fusion of Reason (the referee) and Emotion (the player)

Game 38, 2017-18

Let's say that in theory the referee represents Reason, and that the players represent Emotion. The (uncorrupted) referee has no interest in the outcome of any given game, as it's their job to rationally and neutrally implement the rules.

Meanwhile, the players have only two goals in mind - the success of themselves and their team. The desire to score and win is driven by feelings of loyalty and ambition. Anything that thwarts that ambition provokes frustration and even anger (I know this because I played for 40 years).

"Hey, Roald, lend the
ref yer coat, will ya?"

A referee must accept that, as the anchor of reason, they are going to come into conflict with the mental tipping point of performers who, in their dreams, imagine themselves as heroes, even if only for a few hours among a small group of people wearing the same coloured shirt. That's an integral part of the game. There are days, though, when the precarious balance between reason and emotion makes no sense at all. Days when I'm pushed to get emotional too.

On Saturday night it was colder than it's been all winter - minus 7 degrees, with that same persistently penetrative wind that's been chilling our fibres since the middle of last week. And yet again I had the immense privilege of refereeing a one-sided U19 boys friendly match for the vast reward of €14, while all sensible folk were huddled in front of the football highlights or drinking beer somewhere warm. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who didn't want to be there. That's just by way of background...

A nice sunset and a bog-standard shoving match

Game 37, 2017-18

Sometimes there's no story to tell, but at least there's a picture to show. What you do not sense from the photograph is the bone-cutting breeze that added an extra layer of chill to an already sub-zero evening. At half-time in this U19 friendly, the away coach - 4-1 down and with only ten starting players - made the case for a shortened second half. Neither I nor the home coach had any problem with that.

After another commendably discussion-free first half, the inevitable happened in the second - a couple of the away players started to get frustrated at the score-line and committed deliberate, niggly fouls. This eventually resulted in a shoving match between two opposing teenagers, and the old fart with the whistle intervened to sort things out. Stern lecture, two yellows - the usual. The rest of the evening passed without incident, and at the final whistle we all trotted off a little quicker than usual to the warmth of the changing rooms.

When I got home I watched the second half of Sevilla v Manchester United. Hard to say which of these two games was more forgettable.

Final score: 9-1 (3 x yellow)

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. 

A 'soft' foul in the penalty area is still a penalty kick

Game 36, 2017-18

"And don't talk back to the referee!" I hear the home trainer instructing his U17 side just as I open the door to my changing room to step out and start the match. Sound advice.

And they don't, at least not to start with. This is the same club I reffed at on Valentine's Day, and clearly one with a generally healthy sporting culture. The first half passes without any major incident - no goals, no bookings, in a game of few chances contested by two well-matched teams. There's not a single sigh of dissent at any of the multiple free-kicks I blow for. If this keeps up, I'm going to start seriously enjoying my part-time job.

Careful with those arms
in the penalty area... (pic: N Lotze).

The second half would have passed just as quietly, had it not been for the two penalties. Both are conceded by the home team, and can only be described as 'soft', but they are clear fouls, committed right in front of me. Both times, a defender throws an opponent to the ground - not violently, just lazily. The first as the ball's flying overhead from a cross, the second as two players tussle for the ball after a corner kick. 

I've written before about players protesting penalty calls on soft fouls. "How can you give a penalty for that?" And I've written before that I have a certain sympathy - the weak foul didn't earn the harsh punishment of a spot-kick. But even a stupid and unnecessary foul is a foul, and if it's in the penalty area, it's a penalty kick. Go sing your laments on a hill-side in Zürich, but short of abolishing the penalty kick, Fifa's not changing the law on this any time soon.

So, I tell them all to shut up and back off. Both penalties are converted. The home team never really looks like getting one back.

It's not hard to treat the ref like a human

Game 35, 2017-18

It's Valentine's Day and I have a date after dark, somewhere in the woods, with 22 younger women. Kick-off is 8pm. Mrs RT is not happy, but it's nothing to do with the younger women. I'm recovering from a heavy cold and she thinks I'm an idiot for going out to run around in temperatures just below the point of freezing.

Hot chocolate and
unromantic cards
for Valentine's.

She's probably right (she usually is), but I go anyway. It's not that I wouldn't rather stay at home in the warmth, eating the rest of last night's stew and watching Real v PSG. But once I've accepted a game, I hate to turn it back for any reason. The referees' assignors hate you doing that even more, and I completely understand their point of view. As a coach, I hate players crying off late with weak excuses, but they do it all the time. If this was a coaching rather than a refereeing blog I'd write a list here of all the best ones, while weeping and wondering why people ever bother volunteering for anything at all.

I like the home club - they're one of the few places to always give you a warm welcome and hand you a bottle of water without you having to ask. The key-grip to the referee's changing room looks like a murder weapon, but you never know when that might come in useful too. I sit down to get changed and am suddenly worried by a thought that hits me way too late. What if Mrs RT had come home tonight and been hoping to find candles, chocolates, cards and a three-course meal on the dining room table? The Full Valentine's Bollocks...

Deliberately making the wrong decision

Game 34, 2017-18

On Saturday I gave a free kick when I should have given a penalty. There are no excuses for consciously making the wrong decision, but I'm going to explain it anyway.

The home team was leading 9-0 in a boys' U19 match. I had already awarded them three penalties. One had been saved and two converted. Their opponents simply were not good enough to take the ball off them. The home team's right-winger dribbled the ball towards the penalty area at speed. As he reached the area he was tripped, right on the line. I indicated that the foul had taken place just outside the area and awarded a free kick. No one complained.

A friendly club - except when they're playing friendlies

Games 31-33, 2017-18

The end of the winter break is approaching and the fixture list is gradually filling with friendlies. I return to the club where last time around I sent off the home coach and three players, one of whom threw his shirt in my face and then had to be restrained from attacking me. Has he been banned for life? No, he's in the starting line-up, and is standing at the halfway line with his team-mates having a light-hearted chat with me prior to kick-off about just how nut-numbingly cold it is.

In the spirit of friendship, it was back to
 liberally dishing out these at the weekend

"Last time I was here I showed four red cards," I remind them. They smile at this fond memory and tell me there will be none of that kind of behaviour today. After all, it's just a friendly. The player who threw his shirt in my face looks me in the eye and says, "The guy you sent off that time won't be causing you any trouble. He's not playing today." Either he's thinking of another game, or he's hoping that I don't remember his face (I do), or that I didn't check if his name was on the team-sheet before I left the house (I did). Or, more worryingly, he has two separate personalities.

They're an odd fucking bunch, right enough. They joke with me before the game, and afterwards too. In between, they are almost exclusively unpleasant...

A simple law to curb excessive goal celebrations

Last weekend, for my sins, I went with my Dad to watch Gainsborough Trinity play Alfreton Town, two teams at the lower end of the English regional sixth division (National League North). Gainsborough haven't had much success lately, so when they went 1-0 up after half an hour the celebrations were more than you might expect at this level. The goal scorer sprinted towards the home bench and jumped into the arms of his coach. The rest of the team followed and there was an almighty love-in.

My dad, who's very much old school when it comes to sporting behaviour, groaned at this excessive display, just as he'd loudly objected earlier to one of the Gainsborough players trying to get the referee involved in a long and pointless discussion about the exact place where an opponent's free-kick was about to be taken. The Alfreton players, meanwhile, had spotted that the Gainsborough players were now all in their own half, emoting by the bench. They had the ball at the centre spot and were ready for a quick restart.

They looked to the referee for a signal. And according to the laws of the game, he should have let them play. They would have had a clear run on goal, aside from maybe the home side's goalkeeper. But the referee refused to give the signal for the restart until all the Gainsborough players had finished hugging each other and had lined back up in position.

Saluting Harry, the amateur leagues' mental monster

Game 30, 2017-18

Not Harry, but a Harryesque
tackle (pic N. Lotze)

There's always a Harry, isn't there? He's one of the senior players on the team, and he plays in central defence. In this country - if he was good enough to be an active professional in the first division - the football press would adoringly label him a "monster of mentality".

As it happens, Harry's mainly just a mental monster in the amateur reserve leagues. He's absolutely uncompromising in the tackle. He never holds back when there's a challenge to charge into. He seeks out the ball like it's an incoming missile, and he's the last shield that will prevent it from causing wholesale destruction. Once intercepted, it doesn't matter where the ball goes, just as long as it's nowhere near his own goal.