Bloody hell. Not one apology, but two

Games 34-39, 2023-24

A father comes up to me at the end of Game 38, a boys' U15 league match. He's laughing as he asks how many cards I showed. I'm not laughing as I tell him - seven cautions and a time-penalty. Another father shakes my hand, thanks me, and says he admires referees for turning out for games like this one. I nod in acknowledgment, but I'm in no mood for a chat. I retreat to my changing room and fill out the match stats. Then I add in the box under 'other observations':

"Seven yellows and a time-penalty in a U15 game - it's a crying shame that teams in this age group are already being coached to foul relentlessly and moan disrespectfully at the referee. An extremely unpleasant game."

Thankfully, by the time I come out of my changing room everyone's gone home except for the home coach, who's bringing in the corner flags. He smiles and shakes my hand, a different person to the one who - along with his assistant - was complaining on auto-drone throughout the second half. I'm still not smiling, the game has put me in a shit mood. I tell him that they both deserved yellow cards at least, and he nods ruefully. Instead, I'd just ignored them. Some days, you can't be arsed with the drama and just sink into a kind of melancholy daze, wishing the minutes away as every call you make is greeted with bleats and brays.

This blog is dull. Thank fuck for that at last!

Games 23-26, 2023-24

Let's be honest. No one would watch a soap opera where everyone gets along just fine. We wouldn't pick up a novel where the characters all lead wonderful and fulfilling lives, and no one ever gets sick, dies, or maltreated by fate or fellow human. We wouldn't bother going to the theatre to see a play called Sunshine, Love and Happiness unless we were expecting a high dose of irony. So I must apologise. This blog's becoming dull, and I really hope it stays that way.

I refereed four games this past weekend, and the weather was ultra-Novemberish throughout - very windy, with periodic rainfalls and temperatures dipping down into single figures. Cycling against a head wind to my fourth game on Sunday afternoon, though, I was struck by a delightful realisation. In spite of the weather, I was looking forward to the game. I started to laugh. Just imagine - for the first time in years, I'm glad to be refereeing.

The stats below tell the story. Four games, with a sole yellow card. It was for dissent in a boys' U15 game, handed out for a second offence after a verbal warning. There was no great drama involved. The dissent was born of frustration, and the caution was accepted without protest.

The away team had raced into a 4-0 lead by half-time, and much to everyone's surprise - home players included - the host team turned it around in the second half, finally scoring the winner in the game's last minute. Their untrammelled joy made you glad to be there and part of a thrilling game. The home team will be talking about it for years to come, especially the lad who scored the winning header from a corner kick, completing his hat-trick and sealing the victory with a twist of the neck and a well-executed nod on leather.

No coaches complained. No one shouted from the touchline that I was shit (or, if they did, I didn't hear it). One player said, "Really, really well reffed - thank you," and they weren't being sarcy. One coach who came to pay me was in a bad mood after his team lost 5-0, but apologised and clarified that "it's nothing to do with you". Well, that's good to know. I didn't offer him the consolation that at least he had plenty to work on at training this week.

I also coached a young ref doing his first game. He's the fourth successive teenage referee over the past few weeks to give me hope for the future. Smart, articulate, competent and curious, he had no trouble at all taking charge of a U11 match-up. He asked me what level I referee at. I explained how I'd recently asked to be taken off men's and U17/U19 boys' games. "You can do that?" he asked. Well, as I've realised, no one can force you to do something that you don't want to. I was expecting to be assigned no more than a couple of games a month, but on both Saturday and Sunday I got phone calls asking me to jump in and referee a second game at the last minute. When things stay this quiet, I'd happily ref half a dozen games every day.

It's wonderful to no longer dread doing the hobby I love. As long as that continues, this blog will be updated on an occasional basis only, which is surely a relief to us all.

Game 23: 5-4 (1 x yellow)
Game 24: 0-5 (no cards)
Game 25: 21-0 (no cards)
Game 26: 1-1 (no cards)

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.

The Adventures of Captain Striker, Episode One!

Games 12-14, 2023-24

Captain Striker is a fucking hero. He must be, because he's both the captain and the striker. The bossman goal-notcher. The big cheese leading the front line, also adorned with a special armband with a CAPITAL C (for... Captain, of course!). He's shouldering so many responsibilities - to lead his team, to set an example, and to score the goals too. That Captain Striker is only playing at level nine must be some kind of terrible mistake. It's likely the football establishment has been plotting against him, but Captain Striker knows adversity and will not abjure the struggle.

I'm just about to blow the whistle to start the game when Captain Striker, standing right in front of me, asks for an extra few seconds to say "my prayer". I'm tempted to tell him he's had several hours already to say his prayer, but of course this is not about the prayer. Captain Striker is testing the waters to see if the referee harbours the necessary respect for him and his footballing superpowers. He closes his eyes and murmurs. I really have no choice but to wait for him to finish before we can all start the game.

Later, I wonder what his prayer was. If he was appealing to his Gods to finally make this the game when he didn't behave like an irritating, temperamental, belly-aching pain in the passage, then the prayer went unheard. If he was praying to be suddenly blessed with clinical finishing skills that would permit him to score an unanswered double hat-trick, then sadly that plea was also ignored. However, if his prayer went something along the lines of, "Dear invisible and unknown entity, please once again make me the biggest fucking twat on the field of play by a colossal margin", then there is indeed a power somewhere above with the magical ability to turn requests into reality.

Captain Striker's chief asset is his loud and rowdy gob. At first, it's aimed at his fallible team-mates, who

The Playmaker who can't play, won't play

Games 9-11, 2023-24

Game 9 (Friday night). There's a lump of shit on the field. It's the away team's number 10, who plays absolutely shit, and acts like an absolute shit. But he's consistently shit. Every time he gets the ball, he passes to an opponent. For a playmaker, there's one principal deficit here - he can't play. He has other skills, though. When I blow up for a foul against this dirty, foul-footed bastard, he yells in disbelief. When I blow for a foul against any of his team-mates, he yells in disbelief. When I don't blow for a perceived foul on one of his team-mates (you'll be guessing the outcome by now), he yells in disbelief.

Yellow-card scoreboard...

You can try talking to players like this, but you're wasting your breath. When you tell them to be quiet they think you're inviting them to a dialogue about this or that decision, which obviously I fucked up on. Every time. And the Non-Playmaker has a glassy expression when you try to look him in the eye and reach what might pass for his brain or his soul, or even a small, concealed part of his personality that's not shitty to the core. He's not interested, and looks past you, while continuing to whine about the unconscionable wrongness of your officiating.

"There's really something wrong with you tonight, isn't there?" It's not me who says this to the Non-Playmaker, but one of his opponents. They also complain, but their complaint is that the other team won't stop complaining. After more yellow cards than I can count, I just ignore the away team. It's a game of 1001 fouls (from both sides), with a lack of collective sporting ability one of the few discernible features alongside grunt-swollen square-ups, compulsive shirt-pulling, deliberate trips, hostile fans on the touchline, and the away trainer jumping up and down like he's working off years of frustration for being small, bald and stupid.

Upset about nothing

Games 5-7, 2023-24

My hobby is upsetting people. I don't mean that I set out to upset. It's not my hobby in itself to upset people. It just so happens that what I do in my free time makes a lot of people angry. I know this makes no sense. I know that I should seriously consider finding another hobby. I don't like upsetting people.

Game of Rage

In Game 5, I upset the home team's captain. Fifteen minutes earlier, I was shaking his hand and agreeing that we wanted a nice, calm game, because it's a friendly. Both sides are near-neighbours and will be having a barbecue afterwards. Unleash the doves of peace! And yet here he is, yelling in my face. What have I done to upset him? I blew my whistle and gave a penalty to the other team, just because he up-ended an away team forward who was shaping up to shoot. I'm five yards away. Only the captain complains, loudly and in my face.

And yet, if I hadn't called the penalty, the other team would have been upset. It's so hard to keep everyone happy.

Pre-season friendlies usher in the first storm clouds of dissent

Games 1-4, 2023-24

Game 1: We've played seven minutes of my first game of the new season before I reach into my left pocket for a yellow card. The away team's number 7 has been called up for a clear handball. He protests loudly, then kicks the ball away. Time to set an early signal...

Forgotten something, old man?

Hang on, where are my cards? At this second, I realise that I've left both of them in the changing room. Good start to the season, ref. No early signal after all, except to signal that my mind's going, one day before my 58th. birthday. What should I do? Should I just hope that there are no cardable offences for the next 40 minutes? It's a boys' U17 game, so that's very unlikely, as I've just seen.

I let play continue with the free-kick. Five minutes later, there's the first goal of the game. I run off the field, and fortunately the groundsman with the key to my changing room is sitting right there. He lets me in, I grab my cards, then run back out and blow for the re-start as though nothing unusual's happened, even though everyone's staring at me and wondering what the hell I'm doing. Three minutes later, the number 7 commits another foul, and quite a nasty one at that. This time he gets the yellow card he deserved five minutes ago.

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.

Did I make the right call? Yes. No. Maybe

Games 42-43, 2022-23

On Wednesday morning I get off a long-distance overnight flight, go home for a nap, then head out to the countryside to referee a level 8 men's game, all in the name of conquering jet-lag in a single day. I've been switched off refereeing for the best part of three weeks, so I figure that dropping myself in at the deep end without a life-jacket will be the best way to re-acclimatise to the norms of European amateur football.

A chill wind beneath a deceptively bright evening sun host an encounter between a team struggling against relegation, and the unbeaten league leaders, fought out on a bumpy grass field that I measure, by foot, as a few metres longer than the regulation 110. Should I cite the rule book and order the home team to shorten the pitch by a few yards before kick-off? I'm sure that would go down well with the 150 or so spectators who have showed up. Much better to pretend that I never measured it in the first place.

There's no time to ease myself back into reffing, as the two teams get stuck right in - to each other. There are almost no chances, but numerous fouls. The last time I reffed here it was 0-0, and I wonder if I'm ever going to see a goal at this ground. Then in first-half injury time the home goalkeeper calls for and comes for a cross from a free-kick, but an away forward is there first with his head. The ball loops into the unguarded net, and the league leaders take an undeserved lead into the dressing room.

Another ref's struggle against the wind and the rage of 22 men

Game 41, 2022-23

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.

Have I had a bad game? Or was I just made to feel that way?

Game 40, 2022-23

It's one of those days for the home team. With five minutes to go, they're six goals in arrears. Following a scramble from a corner kick, they have a looping shot headed off the line by an away team defender. They appeal loudly for the goal, but without technology or an assistant on the touchline, there is absolutely no way to tell if the ball was fully over the line or not. I wave play on. The away team launch a smart counter-attack and, 20 seconds later, it's 0-7 instead of 1-6.

It's safe to say that the home team is no fan of me as a referee. In the first half, they complain bitterly that the visitors' second goal should be cancelled out due to an offside in the build-up. "Two meters!" they claim, like this exact measurement backs up their case. It's always that massive two meters, to emphasis my total wrongness. They would never say it was offside "by at least a centimetre". Absolute conviction must batter all doubt when addressing the clueless ref.

The home team's coach is also having trouble with my calls. When his defender lunges into a straight-legged tackle right in front of the home bench, I whistle for a free-kick, despite the defender having won the ball while nailing the man. The coach is predictably incensed and raves away until I appeal for him to calm down. "CALM? WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?" he barks. That means you get to see this plastic yellow rectangle held up before your eyes. It's clinically proven to induce calm.

When referees don't help their own cause

Game 39, 2022-23

Before we get to Game 39, let's wind back a day to the girls' U14 team that I coach, playing in a 7-a-side league. It's almost always very sporting and low stress, which is what I love about it. The referee is about my age, very chatty and friendly. The girls take an instant liking to his approach. He notes their first names down on his game card, so that he can address any issues with them on an informal basis. They've taken off all their jewelry - ear-rings, necklaces and bracelets - and placed them in the valuables bag with their smartphones. One of the girls on the other team has her ear-rings taped over, which is specifically mentioned in the rules as not being permitted, but no one here needs an arsehole to point this out, and frankly I don't give a shit.

Dangerous jewelry...

At the end of the half-time interval we are all chatting cosily with the ref (despite us being 5-0 down) when he notices that one of my players hasn't removed a wafer-thin string bracelet that had been concealed by her long-sleeved under-armour - she'd simply overlooked it. No problem, she removes it straightaway, even though it's impossible that such an item would have caused an injury. And then, our super-friendly ref does something that we take a second to register. He takes out his yellow card and brandishes it with a stiffened arm right in front of the 14-year-old sinner. Ha ha, very funny! This ref's a hoot! Except he's one hundred per cent serious, and - exhibiting a strange transformation in his hitherto genial personality - tells us in no uncertain terms why he "has to" give this card, because it says so in the rules, and then he gets all shirty when I try to gently disagree. Eventually, I turn my back on him to stop myself from raising my voice into pompous 'I'm a referee too!' territory.

"We shoulda had a penalty!" Or, maybe not

Game 38, 2022-23

The home side is 2-0 up and dominating this level 8 men's relegation fight when, a few minutes before half-time, the away team launches a long ball forward. Their striker is running on to the ball as it bounces into the home team's penalty area, but a defender is running beside him. The two go shoulder-to-shoulder as they challenge for the ball. The forward goes down, and the defender clears his lines.

"Penalty!" chorus the away team, and their bench, and their supporters too. I wave play on and shut out the noise around me. Both of these teams are big on the drama, throwing themselves to ground with cries for attention like lachrymose weans aching for motherly love. There's already been a Major Incident when a (possibly) accidental hand to an opponent's face was treated like an attempted murder by the away team, even as the perpetrator apologised at length. The victim kept his face covered for the longest time until it was clear that there was going to be no red card, just a caution. When he took his hands away from his face to expose the brutality of the apparent attack, he was unscarred, unscathed, and very much alive and able to continue the game.

Back to that non-penalty. At half-time I have to pass the small gaggle of away supporters. "Shoulda been a penalty!" says someone in very loud and pointed tones as I make my way to the dressing-room, acting the deaf man (not hard for me, given my hearing impairment).

We are all doomed to Level 11. Get used to it

Games 35-37, 2022-23

A busy weekend with three games in three days, and plenty going on. Two good, enjoyable matches (both men's league games), and one absolute shit-show (boys' U19 friendly). Some new situations, and lots of the same old crap, mainly moaning about offside decisions. 

Friday night lights (pic: Helmut Güsten)

FRIDAY:
Players not knowing the rules, Part 1
During the first half of this Level 10 game, a home team defender comes up with the standard passive-aggressive, "Referee, I have a question." I ignore him, but he complains anyway. When the guests just re-started the game from the centre spot after conceding a goal, they played the ball forwards! At half-time I seek him out and mention his complaint. "You have to watch out for that," he tells me. Why, I said? Since when has it been against the rules to play the ball forward from a kick-off? Oh, he replies, his indignant and confrontational attitude now replaced with mild surprise. Is it allowed?

Offside, Part 1
As we're coming out for the second half the home team players mention in refreshingly friendly tones that the goal they conceded in the first half should have been annulled for offside because an opponent was directly in front of the keeper, blocking his view. In retrospect, I tell them that I think they have a point, although the keeper would never have saved the ball even if he'd had a full view of it. "That one's on me," I say, and they laugh. It helps that they're 3-1 up, but the courtesy and the absence of any malice is a big plus.

"You should quit refereeing"

Games 33-34, 2022-23

"You should quit refereeing." The advice comes from a 17-year-old central defender at the end of a game where his team has lost by eight goals. He'd also been dismissed for his third bookable offence, having picked up a yellow card for dissent, a five-minute time penalty for a serious foul, and then a yellow-red card for upending an opponent in the penalty area just three minutes after returning to the field. So you can see why he'd want me to hang up my whistle. His football career would surely be advancing much quicker if referees would only wave play on every time he yells at them or kicks an opponent.

"Ref, if I could just give you some advice..."

That was the U19 game on a Saturday evening. The next morning, under a cold and depressing rain, I'm back out refereeing an U17 match. There are three yellow cards in the first six minutes:

1' The home team's number 8 takes out an opponent with the game's very first tackle. Me (loudly): "Are you off your head? That's not how we're playing the game here today."

4' The away team's number 17 in central defence fouls the same forward twice in two minutes after he's been out-dribbled. "Two fouls already," I call out as I brandish the card. He doesn't foul again.

6' The away team's number 9 is tripped, but when the home player apologises and offers him a hand up, the number 9 squares up to him instead. Time for another short lecture, and a yellow for unsportsmanlike conduct. He can't believe it, of course. He was the one who was fouled.

The dread in my head

Game 30, 2022-23

Dread. It’s not a positive emotion. It’s what you feel on the way to a job interview or before a major exam. When the phone rings in the middle of the night. When you turn on the news to hear that the war in Ukraine has escalated, and that the glaciers are melting way too fast. When your partner says, ‘We need to talk.’ It’s what you feel when Scotland play the Faroe Islands.

It shouldn’t be what you feel when you’re on your way to referee a game of amateur football.

There’s nothing special about this game. It does not involve difficult clubs that I’ve had a bad experience with in the past. There’s nothing in the Fair Play table to suggest that this game will be any more or less fraught than any other game I’ve ever taken at Level 8. There’s been no warning from a colleague about an especially explosive coach or a gobby captain. There is no rational foundation to my dread. Nonetheless, it’s there. All morning.

It's the last game of 2022. It’s a very cold Sunday in mid-December, and it’s snowed overnight, maybe an inch or so. I check my schedule and see that the game is set to be played on artificial turf, considerably reducing the chances of it getting called off. It’s an overwhelmingly grey day, and I have to get the train to take me half an hour out of town. But that isn’t the reason for the dread, this tugging, gut-based fear that something very bad’s going to happen. That I’m going to fuck up a major decision. A decision that will make a lot of people go red in the face and loud in the mouth.

The Fan Who Cried 'Scandal!'

Games 22-23, 2022-23

It's a sporting truth that the spectators on the touchline know the laws of the game much better than the qualified referee in the middle of the park. Accordingly, we hear from them all the time. In the second half of Sunday's game, following a corner kick cleared by the defending away team, I stay in position so that I'm standing directly in line with the defence as the home team plays the ball back into the danger area. Their number 6 is standing a yard offside, inside the 6-yard box, but moves back into an onside position to receive the pass.

He's about to turn and score when I blow my whistle and raise my arm, and of course he's frustrated. He blasts the ball out of play and curses, though not directly at me, so I don't show the yellow card - his team is five goals in arrears, so I let it go. I make the air traffic control gesture to indicate that he's come back to receive the ball from an offside position. Behind me, though, a lone spectator begins to bellow long and loud to the autumnal sky, finishing with the words, "That's an absolutely disgraceful decision! That's a scandal!" Among a crowd of maybe 60-70 people, I hope that at least one of them explains to him why he's shouting shite.

50 touchline refs, but none with the guts to pick up a whistle

Game 19, 2022-23

When Saturday came, I took a day off to hang out with Mrs Ref. We acted like we were on holiday - got up late, went out for breakfast, took in a gallery and a film, then indulged ourselves at dinner. Football only came into play when we watched the Bundesliga highlights just before midnight. When the game's become a year-round, all-pervasive, seven-day affair, it does no harm to shut it out for a short while (or a long one).

On Sunday afternoon I had a level-8 game 20 miles out of town, in another one of those small towns with one bar, one pharmacy, one team. It rained all morning as I toyed with the transport alternatives of bike or train. According to the online updates, the trains were running late or not at all, and I'm stressed at even the first thought of being stranded on a platform somewhere between A and B, with kick-off approaching and the nearest taxi-rank half an hour away. At 12.15, it's raining hard, but at 12.20 it stops and clears, and so I jump on my bike and head cross-country on the old trading route that's now a cycle and hiking path.

Just under two hours later, spattered with mud, I'm greeted by the club secretary with the usual query when he doesn't believe his own eyes: "You came by bike?" The bike rack's empty, but the car park's full. The reserves are struggling at 3-1 down. There's no official referee, so they've commandeered someone from the home club, who's wearing a track-suit and following the government directives to save as much energy as possible. He gives the home side a penalty, generating an opera's worth of choral disbelief from the visitors.

Dissent - football's festering verbal disease

Games 11-14, 2022-23

Dissent. Never-ending dissent. I would enjoy refereeing ten times more if players would just shut up and play. If they would only learn that moaning about a decision will not prompt me to change my mind, but it will prompt me to recall Law 12 and its rectangular yellow sanction for theatrical gesticulation and runaway gobs.

Half-time event (see below)

How I love games without dissent. Like the two intense, hard-fought midweek cup ties last week - a U17 and a U19 game - where there was an almost complete absence of moaning. The one player booked for dissent over the two games came and shook my hand after the final whistle, said thank you, and even smiled.

There are teams that take you seriously when you show no mercy for their lack of respect. In Saturday's U19 boys' league game, I lecture to one complaining home team player, "My name is not 'Ref', to you it's Mr. Referee, and you will keep your mouth closed and accept my decisions for the rest of the afternoon." It doesn't even need that stupid little yellow card to come out of my pocket - that's it with the dissent until the fifth and final minute of stoppage time.

The home team's leading 5-4 and are taking the ball to the corner flag. When the ball goes out of play, I indicate a throw-in for the hosts. The away team's left back unleashes a torrent of abuse in my direction. I

The Romance and the Rain (and the home coach is a pain)

Game 10, 2022-23

A men's cup game in the rain under floodlights - that always sounds so romantic. Does this constellation bring out the best in the two teams, though? Is this game the sporting equivalent of a candlelit dinner with a laid-back jazz trio playing smooth grooves in the background? If you've been reading this blog for the past six years, you'll know the answer to that without reading a further word.

Romance in the rain. It's over-rated.

The home team play two levels below the visitors, but clearly relish their role as underdogs. Their bench is loud, as refereeing colleagues had warned me it would be. "The first time their coach yells at you, show him a card," is their advice. "Don't worry, he's used to it." Indeed, by the eighth minute, I've flourished the lightly coloured plastic towards a man whose default setting appears to be: hysterical hobgoblin on the verge of a cardiac arrest. A few minutes later his son - playing in midfield - follows suit for commenting, "You might as well go upstairs and ref the game from there." I'm not sure what that actually means, to be honest (their clubhouse only has one floor), but the tone's enough to again lure the card out of my pocket.

With just 17 minutes gone, the home team's 0-1 down and has four yellow cards for a combination of dissent and extremely robust play. The insane thing is that this goes on to help them win the match. They