Calling the cops to ensure a safe passage home

Games 15-17, 2023-24

Let's jump to Game 17. It was already over two weeks ago, but it's taken me that long to feel like writing about it. For the first time ever, the police were called to one of my games. If we want to put a positive spin on it, I suppose that's not bad going after 15 years.

It was a one-sided boys' U19 game of parsimonious quality but the usual lavish amounts of fouling, moaning and mutual disrespect. In the first half, there were nine cautions for 'tick-them-off' stupidities - kicking the ball away, failure to retreat at a free-kick, a square-up involving the away team's number 3 (relevant for what happens later), and several over-the-top fouls, including one by the away team's number 8. Following his yellow card, he gets into a shouting match with several of his opponents and is immediately subbed out by his coach. Thank you.

As we walk off the field at half-time, I make a loud appeal for both teams to focus on their football in the second half. I might as well have been asking them to put their their mobile phones in a locked box until they'd read and memorised the Complete Works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The tone of the game is no different, and although the home team is dominant, they're also dirty too - two players get sent out for five minutes for reckless fouls. When one of their forwards fouls the previously cautioned number 3 with a quarter of an hour left to play, the victim comments that if he gets fouled again, "I'm going to break someone's foot".

I wish I hadn't heard that, but I did, although he doesn't say it aggressively. I don't really think he wants to break someone's foot, it's more a dumb rhetorical observation, but I send him out for a five-minute time-penalty so that he can think about it. His still benched team-mate number 8, though, who obviously didn't hear number 3's comment, is absolutely outraged on his behalf and starts screaming at me, "Are you taking the piss? Are you taking the piss?"

I show him the red card, which prompts him to jump from the bench and run on to the pitch, screaming at me as he runs towards me. Team-mates hold him back and return him to his position. I talk to the home coach and tell him that if it happens again, he should immediately call the police.

After five minutes, number 3 returns to the field. A couple of minutes later, he commits a clearly intentional, reckless foul just outside his own penalty area. He accepts the red card (third offence after his yellow and time-penalty) and begins to walk off, but his team-mate on the bench, the raging number 8, again undertakes a 30-yard sprint in my direction, once more yelling at the top of his lungs. I blow the whistle to abandon the game, signal to the home coach that he should call the police, and make a hasty retreat to my changing room, where I lock the door and wait.

Two sympathetic police officers show up and interview everyone involved. I can't remember what the number 8 was shouting at me exactly (there was a lot of shouting, as always), so they leave it at a caution. I don't want to prosecute anyway, I just want to get home without being physically attacked by someone 40 years younger than me. When I finally leave the ground, almost everyone's gone, but the away team coach and the number 3 are waiting in the car park to apologise. It turns out that number 3 is a fellow referee. "You know that saying out loud that you plan to break someone's foot is a red-card offence, right?" I ask him. He nods in agreement.

It also turns out that the 21-year-old coach is a stand-in for the usual coach. It also turns out that I'd yellow-carded him the previous Tuesday night in Game 14, where several players on his team had told me I should quit refereeing. Of course, I can't be sure that he was on the bench as a coach at the U19 game saying, "He reffed our game on Tuesday and he was shit then too," but let's be honest, it's not hard to imagine.

The next day, I'm supposed to be refereeing a Level 8 men's game way out of town. I just can't do it and pull out first thing on Sunday morning, much to the irritation of my refereeing bosses (none of whom ask me, "Are you okay, by the way?"). Then I spend Sunday afternoon writing the disciplinary report, and send it with an email to my referees' association saying that from now on I'm only refereeing women's and girls' games, and boys' games at U15 and below. I also ask to work more as a coach to young referees, because I still actually enjoy that part of the job.

The fellow refs in my WhatsApp chat group warn me against over-reacting, but this is no sudden phenomenon. Already last year, I talked about the feeling of dread in my head every time I'm on my way to a game, and the immense relief afterwards when nothing bad has happened. It was like that in Game 15 on Friday night, a very fast, foul-filled and intense men's Level 10 game where I covered 9.5 km because I was set on not missing a single thing. It should have been satisfying, but it wasn't. It was just stressful.

The bizarre outcome of game 16, a 31-goal home defeat in an utterly pointless U15 match, was overshadowed by what immediately followed in the U19 game on the same pitch. I'd turned up to find the morose home coach smoking a cigarette and looking like he'd rather be in a distant meadow watching cow shit dry. "Our coach left and took all the best players with him," he informs me. He only has ten players, and even though their opponents play down a man after the eighth goal, it makes no difference - some of these players look like they've never kicked a football in their life. A couple of days later, the club withdraws the team from the league.

Over the past fortnight, I've moved on. After an initial period of deep sadness and anger that these serial arseholes - and the ineffectual sanctions imposed by the state FA, and the spinelessness of my referees' association - were in effect forcing me to give up something I love, I started to feel the serene liberation of no longer having to be constantly yelled at on my weekends. Although after Game 18 this past weekend, I still found myself by unfortunate chance involved in a heated confrontation with another U19 boys' team coach. More on that next time...

Game 15: 3-4 (5 x yellow)
Game 16: 0-31 - t-h-i-r-t-y o-n-e (no cards)
Game 17: 9-0, match abandoned after 85 minutes (9 x yellow, 3 x time-penalty, 2 x red)

My book 'Reffing Hell: Stuck in the Middle of a Game Gone Wrong' 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.