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.

A straight red card rarely calms a game

Games 22-23, 2017-18

Fifteen minutes to go, and I'm surrounded by four people, all of them screaming at me. One of them is the home number 9 I've just sent off for stamping on an opponent, a crime he vigorously denies. The other three belong to his team's touchline entourage - they may be coaches, spectators or even the stewards. I'm not looking at them, I'm staying calm and ordering them to move away.

Traffic wardens - card-issuing
enforcers about as popular as referees.

There's nothing like a straight red card to ignite the tinders of outrage at the referee's very existence. Only when there's been a fist thrown does the miscreant usually accept his fate and walk away. For filthy fouls and acts of minor, stupid and unnecessary violence like this one, the punishment administered is apparently beyond the realms of human belief. How, how, how could I possibly send this player off? "I was only going for the ball!"