I have a half-hour walk back to the train station after Sunday's game. It's finally stopped raining, but it's still blowing a shitter. I pass a grass football field that had been empty and quiet on my walk in a few hours earlier, but which is now hosting a bellicose men's game. The first thing I see is is the referee showing a red card to the home team's number 4. Mayhem immediately ensues.
Needless to say, I stop to watch the drama. The referee is surrounded by the entire home team and their coaches, presumably pleading that he has made a dreadful error. The away team gets involved too, and there's a whole load of shouting and shoving. Then there's the usual slow infusion of reason and calm. It just takes a few minutes. The referee takes the number 4 to one side, and they have a long talk. The player stays on the field. The game resumes, and after clocking the dreadful quality, I continue my journey home.
Of course, the referee caught in the middle of this turbulent stramash has my sympathies. At the same time, I'm reassured - as always when I witness such scenes - that it's not just me. That I am not the sole and personal cause of all the hot and bothered emotions at the games I officiate. That there really is a general malaise infecting our rotten sporting culture all the way down to the bottom of the game.
And the game I briefly stopped to watch really was the dregs - Level 12 (Kreisliga D), which until I looked it up online I didn't even know existed. The game record shows that there was no red card. A 1-1 draw. One man in a yellow shirt against a fearsome wind on an open field, with 22 flawed human beings loudly and uselessly contesting possession of a single spherical object. As a species, we're probably still in the very early stages of evolution.
My own game (Level 9) was okay, starting with the home club greeting me at the gate, seeing me to my changing room, explaining to me the mechanics of the day, providing me with a bottle of water, and offering me a post-game meal. Isn't it always like that, someone asked me when I tweeted my gratitude that same night? It should be, but it rarely is, even though it really doesn't require a huge amount of effort.
There's a yellow for dissent after five minutes (the away team's number 5 somehow outraged that I've spotted his team-mate's filthy tackle), which keeps things fairly quiet for the rest of the first half. The visitors fall further behind in the second period, though, and this leads to the customary carping. "He's reffing against us," whines one player. Yeah, mate, I always choose a preferred team. Or is your defending just shit? The away fans and bench bellow at me time and again, but I let the high winds carry their wrath up and away into the universe and beyond. Somewhere in another galaxy in a billion years time, creatures on a distant planet will be baffled by faint cries of, "Referee! Offside! Two metres!" In German.
At the final whistle, the player I'd cautioned for dissent is the only one on the away team to shake my hand. He even smiles. As I'm walking back towards the changing room, one of the vociferous away fans accidentally drops a €2 coin. He's too old to pick it up, so I bend down and do him the favour. He smiles too, and thanks me. See, there we go. The game's over, and we're all nice and human again.
Final score: 5-2 (3 x yellow)
Of course, the referee caught in the middle of this turbulent stramash has my sympathies. At the same time, I'm reassured - as always when I witness such scenes - that it's not just me. That I am not the sole and personal cause of all the hot and bothered emotions at the games I officiate. That there really is a general malaise infecting our rotten sporting culture all the way down to the bottom of the game.
And the game I briefly stopped to watch really was the dregs - Level 12 (Kreisliga D), which until I looked it up online I didn't even know existed. The game record shows that there was no red card. A 1-1 draw. One man in a yellow shirt against a fearsome wind on an open field, with 22 flawed human beings loudly and uselessly contesting possession of a single spherical object. As a species, we're probably still in the very early stages of evolution.
My own game (Level 9) was okay, starting with the home club greeting me at the gate, seeing me to my changing room, explaining to me the mechanics of the day, providing me with a bottle of water, and offering me a post-game meal. Isn't it always like that, someone asked me when I tweeted my gratitude that same night? It should be, but it rarely is, even though it really doesn't require a huge amount of effort.
There's a yellow for dissent after five minutes (the away team's number 5 somehow outraged that I've spotted his team-mate's filthy tackle), which keeps things fairly quiet for the rest of the first half. The visitors fall further behind in the second period, though, and this leads to the customary carping. "He's reffing against us," whines one player. Yeah, mate, I always choose a preferred team. Or is your defending just shit? The away fans and bench bellow at me time and again, but I let the high winds carry their wrath up and away into the universe and beyond. Somewhere in another galaxy in a billion years time, creatures on a distant planet will be baffled by faint cries of, "Referee! Offside! Two metres!" In German.
At the final whistle, the player I'd cautioned for dissent is the only one on the away team to shake my hand. He even smiles. As I'm walking back towards the changing room, one of the vociferous away fans accidentally drops a €2 coin. He's too old to pick it up, so I bend down and do him the favour. He smiles too, and thanks me. See, there we go. The game's over, and we're all nice and human again.
Final score: 5-2 (3 x yellow)
You can hear me talking about refereeing and my new book 'Reffing Hell: Stuck in the Middle of a Game Gone Wrong' here. It 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. Thank you!
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