The strange recurring case of Robbie Ratchet

Games 51-52, 2016-17

After a couple of years refereeing in the same city, you start to see familiar faces – coaches, groundsmen, fellow referees, even spectators, and of course the players. A handful are unforgettable, either because they threaten to kill you, or simply because they boast an amusingly alliterated name. That’s one of the reasons why I always recognise a player we’re going to call Robbie Ratchet. The other reason is that he’s a little bit nuts.

"Sir, I wonder if perhaps you might
reconsider that decision, please."

The first time I reffed a game with Robbie two years ago, he got into a verbal fight with some spectators during the first half. It’s theoretically a straight red card, but I had a word and told him to calm down. At half-time he came up to me with a grin and said, “I’m actually a really nice bloke.” Then in the second half he lost his rag at me for making, from his point of view, the wrong decision, and then committed a serious foul – within half an hour of telling me what a nice bloke he was, Robbie was off with a yellow-red card and his team lost 2-0.

When coaches barge in to the referee's changing room

Games 49-50, 2016-17

I coach a boys U14 team and the other week I bollocked them for not shaking the referee's hand at the end of a narrow defeat, and for not congratulating their opponents. "I was ashamed to be your coach today," I lectured. "It's easy to be a good sport when you've won. Not so easy when you've lost."

The next game they lost 1-0, and they were just as pissed off as they'd been the previous week, but most of them remembered to behave about it in a half-way sporting manner.

Lost the game? Bite your
lip and shake it anyway.

Generally, a youth team's attitude is a reflection of the way they're coached. On Sunday I was warned by my refereeing colleagues about the "particularly difficult" home team coach ahead of a boys' U17 game. Well, it couldn't be any worse than anything else I've seen this season.

Let's first rewind quickly to the night before: game 49, boys U19, featuring a visit to the same club whose U17 coach freaked out at me last weekend. This gentleman's team was just finishing their game as I arrived, and he decided to invite himself into my changing room to talk about last Saturday's red card against one of his players for fighting.

A foul, a shove, then a full-blooded fist-fight

Games 47-48, 2016-17

Bremner and Keegan in the
good old days. 

The coach of the away team is on the pitch and yelling at me, even though his side is 3-1 up. I've just shown one of his players a red card. He's so outraged that he wants to take them off the field and concede the game. Even his own players are telling him that's a bad idea. They would rather play another ten minutes and take the three points than forfeit for a 3-0 loss on a matter of principle.

What's going on? It's a boys' U17 game, and up until the 68th minute it has been relatively peaceful. Only half an hour in, when the home team subs in a burly latecomer, do things heat up a little. He slots into the back four and immediately starts a little something with the opposing number 7 after a clash of adolescent bodies and egos. "It was pretty peaceful until you turned up two minutes ago," I say. "Cut it out." And he does.

The away team are league leaders and on the edge of winning the title. The home side are in mid-table, playing out the season without too much enthusiasm. One of their players, the number 16, takes exception to being fouled near the halfway line. He pushes the player who fouled him, the away team's number 15, who pushes him back. So then the number 16 thumps the number 15, and the number 15 thumps him back, and in the course of two seconds it has escalated to a full-blooded fistfight. Think Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan at the 1974 Charity Shield.

I run over, blowing away on my whistle...

Playing dead on a Sunday afternoon

Game 46, 2016-17

Ten minutes to go, the home team is 1-2 down but pressing for the equaliser. They have a corner, and there's lots of movement and bustling about in the penalty area. I watch the away team's number 14 holding one of the home team's players, who is fighting back a little. I'm about to blow my whistle to stop the corner and tell them to quit when the home player lightly shoves the number 14 away from him. Number 14 falls to the ground, clearly dying.

Well, not dying, obviously. But it seems really serious. The emphasis here is on seems. In fact the home player hardly touched him, but it's sparked off a huge kerfuffle. I blow loudly and go over to intervene in what is becoming a massed swinging of murses and airing of playground-like whines. "Referee, red card! Violent conduct!"

Red for "violent conduct". Right.

I lose sight of the home team's player, who's merged into the melee. Very crafty. But I hadn't planned to send him off, or even book him. I just wanted a chat with him and the number 14 to tell them to stop acting like twats and get on with the game. We're nearly done, and there haven't been any cards so far. But I no longer have any idea who he is, so it's a non-issue. Especially as number 14 is still down receiving treatment for the cracked ribs, punctured lung and fractured knee-caps that must surely have resulted from the push, judging by the heroic cry of agony we all heard as he fell.

"What are you going to do?" demands the away team's captain...

Worse than raging dissent - Mr. Calm and Rational

Game 45, 2016-17

Last season I refereed a game where the home team’s captain was a hypnotist. The first few times I gave decisions against his team he walked up to me and commanded, “Look into my eyes, referee. Look into my eyes.” I resisted this invitation on the grounds that if he really was a hypnotist, I might spend the rest of the game ceding to his will every time he said, “Mister Referee, you will now award my team another penalty kick. And the score is already 67-0.”

How to control a referee
who will not see reason

Of course the captain didn’t want to hypnotise me. He wanted to talk. There’s a certain type of player who just loves to talk. Not about the weather, or what you had for dinner last night, or the worrying rise of right-wing populism across the European Union. No, they want to talk about your decisions. These players are not necessarily the moaners and dissenters. Rather they think that, through a calm and rational discussion, they can persuade you that the foul you just awarded against their team was, in fact, not a foul at all.

It’s nice to imagine calling a halt in play while league officials rush on to the field with a table, two chairs, two glasses and a jug of water. The player and I sit down to review my decision at length. First, I give my point of view. The home team’s number 6, due to a combination of slowness, ineptitude and stupidity, had hacked down the opposition’s speedy, nimble winger. My garrulous friend sees it differently. His heavy, hulking, dead-eyed number 6 would never do such a thing. The winger clearly dived.

Sad confessions of a needy amateur ref

Game 44, 2016-17

How important is refereeing to me? I found out this weekend, when it looked like I wouldn't have a game. I had no idea what to do with myself.

Yellow fruit instead of yellow cards. 

It's alright when I travel out of town for the weekend. I don't even think about it. But if I'm at home and available on both Saturday and Sunday, then I am almost always assigned at least two games. This weekend I was only assigned on Sunday morning as a mentor to a newly qualified referee on a boys U13 game. Standing on the touchline taking notes - I don't mind doing it, but it's not the real thing.

On Friday I sent an email to the game assignors. Just to let them know I was around, like, and available if anyone called off at short notice. I got a sniffy email back saying there were plenty of refs this weekend, thanks, and that I shouldn't bother them by lobbying for games. Blimey, I was just trying to help. Or do they get a dozen emails like that from needy refs every Friday afternoon?

The benefits of an Early Yellow

Games 42-43, 2016-17

Hold it high, show it early,
you pompous twat

You should never set out with pre-conceived notions of what kind of a game you're going to be refereeing. I've written that several times before. Yet late on Saturday afternoon, as I cycle through the park and past the re-opened outdoor café with its patrons determined to enjoy the bright but still chilly spring weather, I'm thinking, "This game could probably do with an early yellow card."

How do I know that, an hour prior to kick-off and before even arriving at the ground? It's a boys' U19 game between two teams close to the top of the table. I've checked the statistics from when they met earlier in the season - seven yellow cards, two red cards, and two time-penalties (a 5-minute 'sin bin' sit-out for any player getting a second yellow. In the state where I ref there are no yellow-reds in youth football).

Three red cards and some issues of racial awareness

Games 40-41, 2016-17

Some days, this seems like time
better spent than refereeing. 

Sometimes I get assigned to a game out of town, and when I look at the laughably christened Fair Play Table, my heart sinks a little and I think I know why I'm being given the treat of a longer trip. Yesterday I was sent to officiate between teams who, in the disciplinary rankings, were third bottom (the home team) and bottom (away). This is in a league of very few angels, where you have to be almost conscientiously deviant to hit last place.

I presume that the idea is to ship an unknown ref in for a potentially explosive game, then let him flee the scene never to be heard of again in that neck of the woods. It's true there are some players you encounter on a weekend afternoon you'd might not want to meet on the street late on a week day night. I've retained a clear image in my head of the player who threatened to break my neck last autumn. You know, just in case.

I talk with the referee who's just officiated the game before me, between the reserve teams of the same two clubs. How was it, I ask. He shrugs. "Well," he says of the away team. "They're..." And he names their nationality, like it's understood...

Dealing with a "fucked up" groundsman

Game 39, 2016-17

Beach football, anyone?

Grey, gruff and prone to complaining at the slightest provocation - that's your average groundsman. It's advisable, nonetheless, to stay on his good side. He has the key to your changing room and can, say, adjust both the heating and the water temperature. It's best to keep in with him by lending a sympathetic ear to his low grumblings about the mud and mess that teams always leave behind, and about why the government hasn't yet sent in elite armed unites to tackle and annihilate the city's mole population.

Sometimes, though, it's hard to stay calm in the face of their cussedness, idleness and all-round inefficiency. Yesterday's game was scheduled for the grass field, but when I arrive I find that the grass field has been cordoned off in favour of the cinder pitch. The lines are badly marked, and the cinder hasn't been levelled out since the last game. It's just about playable, but it's in a lumpy, shitty state. On the way back to the club house I inspect the closed-off grass pitch. It's in perfect condition.

A referee's rational response to criticism

Games 36-38, 2016-17

More cards than the
Queen's bloody birthday

City Cup, semi-final - what's at stake? The City Cup winner goes into next season's State Cup, and the winner of the State Cup goes into the first round of this country's FA Cup. Win that, and you're in the Europa League. Win the Europa League and... well, let's say that tonight I'm reffing two potential Champions League participants. Though probably not.

What I'm reffing tonight are two quick but very physical teams. I raise the yellow card so often that my left arm's soon aching like a castaway's knob. At the end of 90 minutes, the central defender of the losing team shakes my hand, then kindly adds, "I haven't seen such a bad referee for a long, long time..."