The perpetual question for amateur referees: "Why the fuck do I bother?"

Games 18-19, 2021-22

Lock him up.

Imagine you're reading a book, sitting peacefully on a bench by a quiet river on a still afternoon, when someone stops in front of you and starts to yell in your face, "Ian McEwan? IAN FUCKING MCEWAN? What are you reading that shit for, you idiot - you should be reading David Keenan's This Is Memorial Device!" Or you're hiking the Pennine Way from Steel Rig to Bellingham when another walker stops you and screams, "You didn't take the detour for the view from Cuddy Crags, and to look at the excavated Roman fort at Housesteads? WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?"

I'm just trying to think of another hobby apart from refereeing where you'd have to put up with a similar level of loud verbal abuse. Just recently I'd had a run of games which - while they were not exactly peaceful- were definitely under control, and I was really starting to enjoy football again. Then came a match last Thursday night that set me back and left me feeling crushed. As I wrote in a somewhat tired and frustrated state after the game on Twitter: "An absolutely miserable men's game tonight - fouling, moaning about every decision, diving, players squaring up, spurious offside appeals. Back to the basic question: why the fuck do I bother?" 

The tweet has had an unprecedented 57 'likes' (roughly ten times my average), which suggests that it resonated among fellow refs. I'd just come off filing the statutory match report (goal scorers, substitutions, cautions etc.), but had opted against a disciplinary report because I was mentally exhausted. But there's also a section in the report for 'Particular Incidents'. We've been expressly told not to write about disciplinary matters in this box because it's supposed to be for irregularities with player passes, serious injuries etc., but I was in the mood to vent, so I wrote the following:

"Massive bundle in the 75th. minute...

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.