Dealing with a "fucked up" groundsman

Game 39, 2016-17

Beach football, anyone?

Grey, gruff and prone to complaining at the slightest provocation - that's your average groundsman. It's advisable, nonetheless, to stay on his good side. He has the key to your changing room and can, say, adjust both the heating and the water temperature. It's best to keep in with him by lending a sympathetic ear to his low grumblings about the mud and mess that teams always leave behind, and about why the government hasn't yet sent in elite armed unites to tackle and annihilate the city's mole population.

Sometimes, though, it's hard to stay calm in the face of their cussedness, idleness and all-round inefficiency. Yesterday's game was scheduled for the grass field, but when I arrive I find that the grass field has been cordoned off in favour of the cinder pitch. The lines are badly marked, and the cinder hasn't been levelled out since the last game. It's just about playable, but it's in a lumpy, shitty state. On the way back to the club house I inspect the closed-off grass pitch. It's in perfect condition.

What happens if the ref swears back?

Game 27, 2016-17

"November seems odd," Tom Waits once sang, and the gravel-voiced troubadour would have had his suspicion confirmed if he'd shown up to watch this gravel-pitch game on a still, grey, dying day in the year's eleventh month.

Failed sobriety test
(pic: Referee Tales)

The first thing I notice is how crooked the freshly painted touchlines are. I'm about to ask the groundsman if he can quickly re-do the goal-line, at least, when I smell his breath. It's 1pm on a Sunday afternoon and he's already shit-faced - very slow to move and barely present in thought. I stick with what we have (see pictures) for fear of getting something worse.

The two teams are second and third bottom, but both are near the top of the Fair Play table. Only one red card between them all season. Should be a quiet game, I think. Stupidly.

The two defences are just as wobbly as the touchlines...