On a dark, wet night when you just don't feel like refereeing...

Game 23, 2019-20

There are some days when you don't feel like leaving the house. It's getting late on a dark Sunday afternoon and the Scottish League Cup Final's just a click away. Everyone else in the family is on the sofa in the warm living room, a plate of Christmas sweets on the coffee table alongside the remote control. It's been raining for the past three hours. And I have a 5pm kick-off - boys U19, preceded by a cycle ride up a rutted, puddle-pocked and very busy road.

Many, many people ask me, "Why do you bother?" I should point out one thing that's maybe not always clear on this blog. I love refereeing. On a good day. In that respect, I'm like almost any fan. Some days I want to write a love letter to the sport that I coach, that I ref, and that I played for over four decades. And there are days when I want to sign off with 'Dear Football, It's taken me a long time to reach this conclusion, but it's finally time we went our separate ways...' It's always enticing to imagine the potential freedom that lies on the other side of such a break. Yet the fear of a head-fucking, latter-life crisis in the resultant void always prevents me from having the guts to take that ultimate leap.

And as Mrs RT says, "You'd be back out there four weeks later anyway." And no one knows me better than Mrs RT. She lived through my three previous attempts to retire from playing, and once from coaching...

A new season starts with silence in the dugouts

Games 1-2, 2019-20

Another year, another season - Game One of the 2019-20 season happens to coincide with my 54th. birthday, doubly accentuating the sense of embarking upon yet another cycle that may well turn out to be the same as the last one, and the one before that. But wait, I hear you say. That can't be true. Fifa has introduced several new Laws! Ah, so the game of football matures a little every year. Fat chance of that happening with me, Mrs RT might observe.

"You need to calm down!" Will new laws
 mean less hassle from the bench?

From a disciplinary point of view, there has been one particular change that should make a huge difference to referees at the dog-scrap amateur level. Now we can show yellow and red cards to team officials, and no longer have to follow the laborious process of a verbal warning, followed by a second and final verbal warning, concluded with a straight-arm dismissal and a further verbal justification. Why was this system so deficient? Because it not only required a lot of effort to explain three times to coaches that they are "behaving in an irresponsible fashion", but also allowed them room to disclaim and involve the referee in an always unhelpful discussion. Plus, in amateur football showing a red card is much more effective and straightforward than pointing to a non-existent stand.

Even better, the head coach is deemed responsible for the behaviour of everyone on the bench. So if you can't identify which one of half a dozen substitutes or team officials screamed at you, you just caution the coach, who carries the can of conduct for those in their charge. That's a significant and beneficial change to those of us alone on a field with 22 young male players and a dozen more potentially temperamental time-bombs planted along the touchline.

What you get if you google "small
birthday gift". Awwww.

It's only fair to warn them of the new laws, though. In Game One, I make the mistake of not bothering...

The Bloke Who Stares and other small club archetypes

Game 26, 2018-19

It's half-time and the home team in this boys U19 game is 3-0 down. My changing room's across the corridor from theirs, but I can hear the coach through two brick walls. He's demanding to know what the fuck they are playing at, because it's certainly not football. He wants some extra effort, he wants them to show that they really want to be out there, otherwise what's the point of being here at all. COME ON NOW!

You could call this place the archetypal city club. I've been here plenty of times before, and to plenty of clubs just like it. It's tucked in to the allotments, a stone's throw from the Autobahn. You can see the towers and lights of the city centre to the east, and on a clear day you can see the hills of the wealthy satellite towns to the north. Both feel beyond reach of a club which, unless you were looking for it, you'd never know was here.

There are certain other staples. In the club house there's an elderly woman in charge of everything. She's civil but she's not over-friendly - after all, how many referees pass through here every week...

Returning to a Referee's Paradise

Game 2, 2018-19

Pretzel and Coke - essential
ingredients in a referee's paradise

On Saturday, I think that I've fallen asleep and transmigrated into a Referee's Paradise. I officiate a game where no one complains. Neither the players, the coaches, nor the spectators. Not even a whisper of dissent aside from a fleeting gesture of frustration at a called foul. And then, after the game, everyone thanks me for turning out. Because this is U10 boys' football.

I'm not supposed to be refereeing at all as I'm still officially out injured - I've been earmarked to coach a young referee who, as young referees will, drops out late on the evening before the game. So I step in, happy that I can take such a stress-free game to get back into the swing of whistling. (How that phrase makes refereeing sound like a carefree, happy-go-lucky activity - like chopping fire-wood or going for a country walk on a mild afternoon.)

Before kick-off I stand at the half-way line waiting with the away team for the home side to come out of the changing room...

A weekend of strikes, anger and disappointment

Games 40-42, 2017-18

After more than a month off refereeing due to a combination of bad weather, illness and holidays, I was set to return to the field this weekend. Then my refereeing body called us out on strike (youth games only) to protest a physical attack last week against one of our members during a boys' U17 game. Nonetheless, I was still in charge of four games this weekend, one way or another, and all of them reflected to varying degrees the still toxic football atmosphere in my city.

The time has come...

I supported the strike and the reasons for it, even though the action was not even discussed (let alone voted on), as it should have been, at our monthly referees' meeting last Tuesday. Not all referees  supported strike action, but you had no choice - if you'd been assigned to a youth game, you were now automatically withdrawn.

On Friday evening, before the strike has started, I ref a boys' U17 game. The home coach introduces herself to me one minute before kick-off, just as she's bringing her team back in from warming up. "Kick-off's at six," I say, pointing out that the away team is already out and ready. She shrugs. I add that I have plans tonight, looking at my watch, but I might as well have been reading her the Confucian Classics in their original Chinese. We kick off eight minutes late.

At half-time, though, she's much keener to talk, appearing at my changing room door with her team 0-3 down. "You need to watch out for offside," is her opening line, with courtesy still far from being her strongest point...

It's not hard to treat the ref like a human

Game 35, 2017-18

It's Valentine's Day and I have a date after dark, somewhere in the woods, with 22 younger women. Kick-off is 8pm. Mrs RT is not happy, but it's nothing to do with the younger women. I'm recovering from a heavy cold and she thinks I'm an idiot for going out to run around in temperatures just below the point of freezing.

Hot chocolate and
unromantic cards
for Valentine's.

She's probably right (she usually is), but I go anyway. It's not that I wouldn't rather stay at home in the warmth, eating the rest of last night's stew and watching Real v PSG. But once I've accepted a game, I hate to turn it back for any reason. The referees' assignors hate you doing that even more, and I completely understand their point of view. As a coach, I hate players crying off late with weak excuses, but they do it all the time. If this was a coaching rather than a refereeing blog I'd write a list here of all the best ones, while weeping and wondering why people ever bother volunteering for anything at all.

I like the home club - they're one of the few places to always give you a warm welcome and hand you a bottle of water without you having to ask. The key-grip to the referee's changing room looks like a murder weapon, but you never know when that might come in useful too. I sit down to get changed and am suddenly worried by a thought that hits me way too late. What if Mrs RT had come home tonight and been hoping to find candles, chocolates, cards and a three-course meal on the dining room table? The Full Valentine's Bollocks...

When your family comes to watch you ref

Game 27, 2017-18

There’s a short history of family members coming to watch me referee over the past decade. The pioneer was my father-in-law, who watched me in action all day at a youth tournament in the US a few years ago. On the ride home, he was resolutely silent. He remained so until two days later when we were watching a game on television. Then he remarked: “This referee’s a lot like you. Very frugal with the whistle.”

Bright shirt on a grey day (pic: N Lotze)

Last year, Mrs RT came along to a men’s game, bringing a book in the expectation that she would be bored. She never even opened the book, being in equal parts horrified, fascinated and entertained by all that unfolded before her, with her husband the centre of attention for 90 minutes. For the following two weeks she followed me around the flat shouting, “Hey ref, what the fuck is that dirty fork doing on the draining board? And where the fuck’s my dinner? Come on, referee!”

This weekend it was my youngest daughter’s turn. She was telling us about an exercise for her design course where she had to take a photograph to illustrate an article for which the students only knew the headline: “Compassion is an unlimited resource.” Oh yes, come along to my game tomorrow, I said, you’re sure to see plenty of examples of unlimited compassion. She took that as a challenge and decided this would be a fun way to spend an afternoon...

The Referee - "Judge, Jury and Executioner"

Game 24, 2017-18

On Friday I took my niece to see the German women’s team play Iceland in a World Cup qualifier in Wiesbaden. Just as half-time arrived, the sun began to go down directly opposite us, shining directly into our eyes. So we moved to the two-thirds empty West Stand opposite so that we could watch the second half in more comfort.

The sun sets on a German
 defeat. Note empty seats
 in the background.

At least, we tried. But the steward wouldn’t let us into the West Stand because we didn’t have the right tickets (though there was no price difference). Our story of the setting sun did not move him. Neither, I suspect, would a crazed gunman on the loose in the East Stand or an incoming North Korean missile have stopped him telling us several times, “I have my instructions.”

We returned to our original seats and watched the rest of the game with our right hands covering our eyes (and I blamed Germany’s first loss in a qualifier since 1998 on the bad karma generated by one of their overly conscientious stewards). Later, Mrs RT and all my in-laws were in agreement about one thing – I was in the wrong. The steward was only doing his job. I argued that the situation called for flexibility – that particular section of the stand was around 90% empty (see picture left), and clearly neither I nor my ten-year-old niece were intending to go in here and start a riot.