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.

And of course it doesn't say so in the rules, and our referee doesn't "have to" issue a caution. It should only be a yellow card if a player "refuses to comply or wears the item again". Indeed, I notice later that the ref omits the card from his game report, perhaps realising that his reaction had been way over-the-top, and completely out of place in a league like this. But sometimes, it's really no wonder so many members of the public think that referees are twats. We don't always help our own cause.

Oh, and though he rescinds the card in the game report, he adds a note saying that I need to take a test on football's rules. Dude... I think about emailing the league director so he can inform my colleague that of the 18 tests I've taken since the start of last season, my average score is 98.6%. But the refs in my chat group talk me down and tell me to get over it, which is sound advice, especially now that I've spewed the story out on here instead. (But there's a little bit of a twat in all of us, I'm sure - it's somehow important to me that you know the above statistic regarding my knowledge of the Laws of the Game.)

Anyway, on to Sunday's game. I get a call a few days before - the game will be taking place under the auspices of the state FA. The away team has been involved in more than a few violent incidents, leading to heavy fines and multiple player bans. The home team also does not consist entirely of white-robed entities with wings descending from the heavens and harmonising on their harps. Each team has hung its national flag on a pole (home) and on their bench (away). In case they were in any danger of forgetting where they come from.

The home team lines up...

What follows, though, is a standard level-9 game full of the usual noise about offside, fouls followed by instant drama (there are so many near-death experiences in just 90 minutes), and players wanting to know if they can please ask me a question. Please, no, I'd rather you didn't. At half-time, as we wait for the away team to come back out, it's the home team's number 7. "First, I have a question for you," I say. "Why are you always offside?" His team-mates all laugh - in fact, I'd heard them complaining among themselves about this as they left the field at the end of the first half. The number 7 takes it well. But his question was rather about a penalty call that never came when he claims that he was tripped in the box.

"I didn't see a foul," I say. "Plus, you went down with a lot of drama. On the other hand, I might have made a mistake. If I did, then sorry." This diffuses any lingering bad feeling about the call, as always, and in the second half the home team barely moan at all after getting two cautions for dissent in the first. It helps that they are way in front, but there are a couple of nice moments of sportsmanship when they admit having touched the ball, giving their opponents a throw-in and a corner kick respectively.

The away team, meanwhile, are doing their utmost to constrain what have presumably become habitually explosive tempers. When one player starts to yell, a team-mate quickly intervenes, and there are collective calls for 'Calm, calm!' every time there's a threatened escalation. Late in the second half, one of them even begs me to give his wittering team-mate a yellow (the usual fierce debate about a throw-in), but it's 6-0 by then and there's not long to play, so I laugh it off and let it go. That is an absolute first, though. Maybe if I'd been the ref from my girls' game, I'd have given the first player a yellow for asking for the yellow. "It's in the rules!"

"What did you think?" the FA rep asks me at the final whistle.
"There were some difficulties from both teams in accepting my decisions," I say, "especially in the first half." We look at each other for a short second and both start laughing. He'd told me earlier that he's a referee himself, with 34 years of experience.
"So, an absolutely normal game?" We both agree. Does 'normal' make the high levels of fouling, noise and general exaggerated drama okay? The question seems almost moot by now. In men's football, there are simply no quiet games any more. None at all. The rule of thumb seems to be that as long as no one got thumped, then the game went well.

Final score: 6-0 (6 x yellow)

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