“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!"

Another weekend of managing mass confrontations

Games 44-46, 2022-23

One of our refereeing overlords last month mused out loud to a room full of over-worked and underpaid amateur referees that he and his colleagues had come up with a theory why player behaviour in one of our neighbouring cities was better than in ours. They'd determined it was because the referees there were stricter about enforcing the proper dress code for players. Correctly coloured under-garments, for example.

Post kick-off, pre-brawl (pic N. Lotze)

He was serious. "We need to stop moaning about how bad things are and concentrate more on the smaller details," he said, in the context of yet more threats and physical attacks in our youth and amateur leagues. The thinking (if you can call it that) was that if you show you're in charge right from the start, the players will have more respect for you. Rather than getting the impression, say, that you're a pernickety twat with delusions of Bundesliga.

As it happens, I almost always insist on the correct dress code (yes, I can be a pernickety twat), although it's not an issue that comes up often. Sometimes, on a very cold day in a bottom-feeder league, I'll be lenient. Either way, it makes absolutely no difference to the low levels of respect accorded to me and my colleagues, in this city or the next one, or any of the other many one-pub towns and villages in between.