50 touchline refs, but none with the guts to pick up a whistle

Game 19, 2022-23

When Saturday came, I took a day off to hang out with Mrs Ref. We acted like we were on holiday - got up late, went out for breakfast, took in a gallery and a film, then indulged ourselves at dinner. Football only came into play when we watched the Bundesliga highlights just before midnight. When the game's become a year-round, all-pervasive, seven-day affair, it does no harm to shut it out for a short while (or a long one).

On Sunday afternoon I had a level-8 game 20 miles out of town, in another one of those small towns with one bar, one pharmacy, one team. It rained all morning as I toyed with the transport alternatives of bike or train. According to the online updates, the trains were running late or not at all, and I'm stressed at even the first thought of being stranded on a platform somewhere between A and B, with kick-off approaching and the nearest taxi-rank half an hour away. At 12.15, it's raining hard, but at 12.20 it stops and clears, and so I jump on my bike and head cross-country on the old trading route that's now a cycle and hiking path.

Just under two hours later, spattered with mud, I'm greeted by the club secretary with the usual query when he doesn't believe his own eyes: "You came by bike?" The bike rack's empty, but the car park's full. The reserves are struggling at 3-1 down. There's no official referee, so they've commandeered someone from the home club, who's wearing a track-suit and following the government directives to save as much energy as possible. He gives the home side a penalty, generating an opera's worth of choral disbelief from the visitors.

Why amateur refs are quitting in huge numbers

Game 22, 2019-20

The weekend before last, just south of the city where I ref, a 22-year-old referee was knocked unconscious by a player who'd just received a red card in a Level 11 game (see right). The referee had to be air-lifted to hospital. Thankfully, he recovered physically, but it made the national news and - as always when an incident like this happens - caused a lot of (temporary) agonising in the media and the football community about the way that referees are treated. Again and again I heard this figure quoted - over the past few years the number of registered referees in Germany has gone down from around 80,000 to 58,000. That's a massive and significant drop in numbers. There have been similar worries in the UK about the decline in the number of officials, and it's all for the same reason - who in his or her right fucking mind would want to spend their free time refereeing amateur football games in the current climate of General Anger About Everything?

I don't quote this exact statistic while shouting at the home team coach and the players of both teams in general during last night's Level 10 men's game. But I do forcefully make the point that "soon there'll be no one to referee your shitty games because we've all had enough of your shit behaviour, so shut your mouths and get on with the game, for Christ's sake." Still mad, I break into English: "You're acting like a bunch of fucking wankers..."