"Excuse me, but we would like to form a wall." Too late, mate

Games 11-12, 2024-25

Second half of a boys' U15 game. The goalkeeper of the away team comes out of his penalty area and carelessly picks up a through-ball with his hands. I blow for the free-kick, he puts the ball on the ground, and begins to run backwards. A forward on the home team looks at the ball, looks at me, and then says, "I can take the free-kick, right?" Of course, I reply. He runs up to the ball, chips it over the goalkeeper's head into the goal, and celebrates with his team-mates.

I turn towards the half way line for the re-start while all around me yell. The defenders on the away team are screaming that they didn't have the chance to set up a wall. Their coach is screaming about the same thing - at least, I imagine he is. I've been ignoring him all game because he's a choleric knave, and I continue to do so now. I'm not about to waste my breath explaining the laws of the game to a ranting idiot. If he doesn't know them, that's his lookout. The same goes for his dirty, fouling, rat-shit team - a sporting collective modelled after their moronic mentor.

10 things amateur referees hate to see or hear

Games 5-6, 2018-19

What are the 10 things I least want to see or hear when I'm refereeing a game of football?

1. The shout for "Offside!" almost every single time a forward is through alone on goal. It comes from the defenders, it comes from the coaches, it comes from the spectators - a one-word vocal plague of ignorance upon the amateur game. During Saturday's game, a goalkeeper saved a free-kick and then complained that the player who followed it up to score was offside. How did he see that when he was saving the kick? He went on about it so much (and I tried to ignore him, but he ran after me almost all the way to the half-way line screaming, "Offside! Offside!") that he ended up with a yellow card.

2. "You have to call fouls against both teams!" This usually comes from a losing coach or one of his players. Oh, really? I thought I was just supposed to call fouls against your team as a heaven-ordained test of your patience...

Missing, presumed dead - Fair Play

Game 46, 2017-18

The home team in this boys' U17 game is bottom of the league with six points, and bottom of the Fair Play table with many more. The two often go hand in hand - the team currently at the top of this league is also first in Fair Play. There are obvious reasons why a well-disciplined XI performs better on the field.

Slogans with good intentions -
but they change fuck all.

I talk to the home side's coach before the game. He explains that he only took the team over two weeks ago, and is preparing them already for next season. "Things have been a bit chaotic," he says. And when the game starts, you can see why a change of coach was necessary. Their understanding of the offside law is non-existent, and their position in the Fair Play standings truly reflects their sourpuss, foul-based approach to football. Again, what a privilege to referee such a game for €14.

Stormy skies, multiple reds and murder

Games 44-45, 2017-18

It's quiet and sultry in the park, with death and distant storms in the air. Two teams of men lazily warm themselves up for the 1pm kick-off. Four days earlier, just a few hundred yards from where we're about to play sport, a dog-walker found the body of a 29-year-old woman. Life must go on, though - this end-of-season dead rubber at the middle to lower end of the city's bottom league abjures all musings on mortality. After all, there's 13th place to defend.

"But ref, I was trying to play the ball!"

It doesn't take long for the afternoon to plummet from meaningless kick-about to a prolonged and rabid expression of collective outrage. It's all my fault, of course, when in the ninth minute an away defender chooses to upend the home team's forward, who's through on goal in the penalty area and about to shoot. It was I who personally wrote the rules saying that the denial of a clear goal-scoring opportunity is a red card offence. And no, there was no attempt at all to play the ball, which was far beyond the lugging defender's reach. It was a cynical, calculated trip.

The red-carded player and his team-mates all surround me, shouting and gesticulating...

Stop screaming at kids. And at referees. In fact, just stop screaming

Game 26, 2017-18

I coach a boys U7 team, and on Saturday morning we had a home game in the Fair-Play League. I am very hands-off and let them scurry around after the ball, backed by lots of encouragement and very little guidance. I stick closely to the League's instructions to keep my team's parents well away from the field of play.

Sticking it to The Man

The away team, however, allows a father to stand behind one goal coaching his son. The kid has the ball in his hands and kicks it straight to one of my players. The father screams at his son for the mistake. My player shoots, the goalie saves (very well), then another one of my players nets the rebound. Making the score... it doesn't matter. We're not supposed to count the score. The father is now gesturing emphatically and screaming at a whole bunch of wee lads: "Where was the defence?"

His two coaches are doing nothing, so I walk up and ask him what on earth he's doing yelling at five- and six-year-old kids. He suddenly looks ashamed, apologises, and then...