What happens if the ref swears back?

Game 27, 2016-17

"November seems odd," Tom Waits once sang, and the gravel-voiced troubadour would have had his suspicion confirmed if he'd shown up to watch this gravel-pitch game on a still, grey, dying day in the year's eleventh month.

Failed sobriety test
(pic: Referee Tales)

The first thing I notice is how crooked the freshly painted touchlines are. I'm about to ask the groundsman if he can quickly re-do the goal-line, at least, when I smell his breath. It's 1pm on a Sunday afternoon and he's already shit-faced - very slow to move and barely present in thought. I stick with what we have (see pictures) for fear of getting something worse.

The two teams are second and third bottom, but both are near the top of the Fair Play table. Only one red card between them all season. Should be a quiet game, I think. Stupidly.

The two defences are just as wobbly as the touchlines...

Sarcastic Applause really shows it to The Man

Game 26, 2016-17

The away team's defender knows that he's going to get a yellow card, but he can't help himself. He claps in my general direction. His applause is not genuine. The number 6 is not actually appreciating my gifts as a referee. Despite having long since gone through puberty, he is conveying sarcasm.

"I say, thank you for applauding
my decision, young man."

It's not that he disagrees with my decision - it's a clear penalty that his team mate's just conceded with a blatant trip in the box, and no one's protesting. Rather, it's the post-script to an incident two minutes earlier when I'd failed to call offside for the home team's eighth goal. The away team had let it all out after that. Tired of yelling at each other after every defensive fuck-up, they went for me instead.

"Why can't you call it offside when they've already scored seven?" yells the central defender. That's an interesting idea, but there's no Mercy Rule in this league, and I can't see any committee passing the proposition that when one team leads by seven goals or more, every subsequent goal should be automatically judged as offside.

The raging of the TWAT with Touchline Tourette's

Game 25, 2016-17

I'm warming up next to the two teams on a chilly but still Sunday lunchtime, and already the crowds are gathering. Not fans, but Egyptian Geese. They've occupied the tops of the floodlight pylons and are making an urgent racket, honking and squawking off-key songs and cranky calls. One of them dive-bombs an innocently stretching player on the home side, much to the delight of his team-mates.

An Egyptian Goose contests an offside
 decision (picture: Harvey van Diek)

Christ only knows what these invasive, aggressive creatures are so excited about. I doubt it's the prospect of 90 minutes of level-nine football between two men's reserve teams. I go back into my changing room to deal with the pre-match paperwork and by the time I've come back out, they're gone. There must be a more attractive fixture in another part of town.

No worries, though, because they have an able replacement in the Totally Wacko Arsehole on the Touchline (TWAT). There's always one. Today he's a member of the away team's entourage, and it's apparently his job to loudly contest my decisions. His two main contributions to the afternoon's entertainment are to yell, "Referee!" on unfavourable calls, and "Offside!" every last time the home team plays a through ball of any description.

The challenges of a split-second penalty call

Game 24, 2016-17

Cup football under floodlights - otherwise
known as 'paradise' (pic: Referee Tales)

City Cup, quarter-final. I'm standing on the end line in my usual position for a corner kick, about 35 minutes in. It's 0-0. The corner comes to the home team's defender directly in front of me, just ahead of the near post. He tries to clear first time but, because it's a wet evening, the ball slices off his right foot and hits his arm. It bounces back down favourably for him and he clears.

"Penalty!" scream several players on the away team. Instinctively, I'd raised the whistle to my lips as the ball hit his hand, but in that split second I decide against blowing. "No intent!" I yell and start to follow the game upfield. There's an immediate foul committed against the home team as it tries to quickly break, and in the ensuing pause the away team further protests about the non-call...

Football without Offside - a German experiment

Click here to order Reffing Hell: Stuck In The Middle Of A Game Gone Wrong by Ian Plenderleith (Halcyon Publishing), published on August 8, 2022. 

Can you imagine football without offside? 11 Freunde magazine was so inspired by a rant on TV from actor Til Schweiger about the need to abolish Law 11 that it turned theory into practice. It staged a 60-minute game between two Berlin Oberliga (fifth tier) sides to see if the game would really be as exciting as some people suppose.

Bruce Willis stars in: The Hardest Call

The game is described in its latest issue (#180), outlining the presumptions beforehand. Abolishing offside would 1. Give players more space. 2. Encourage wing play, as happened when field hockey abolished the rule in 1998. 3. Teams would be prompted to give up the midfield. 4. There would be more shots and goals and 5. The game would go nuts! One interested observer was the manager of second division Union Berlin, Helmut Schulte, who criticised what he called the "crush football" of the modern game - characterised in his view by too many tight midfield battles.

The greatest time and place - autumn, on the football pitch

Game 23, 2016-17

I'm cycling to the game and already there's a fight going on, but only between summer and winter. A chill breeze cuts across a silent Sunday afternoon, while a brittle sun struggles to find cracks in the clouds. The result: the comfort of festering autumn and the dying of the leaves. It's back to long-sleeved shirts for the next five months at least.

Oh Christ, the fucking ref's banging on
about autumn again.

I'm also thinking about all the things that could go wrong today. You try not to expect anything bad ahead of your games, but I last refereed today's home team 18 months ago. On that day I red-carded three of their players in the last 12 minutes of a fractious and filthy adult men's match that ended with them losing 1-0 to an injury time penalty. After the game I had to lock myself in my changing room while a drunk representative of the club banged on the door...

Penalty! Dissenting with the majority view

Scunthorpe United v Milton Keynes, 15-10-16

On a short enforced break from refereeing, I ended up at Glanford Park, Scunthorpe, to watch the current leaders of the English third division take on Milton Keynes, the much vilified entity that stole Wimbledon FC’s identity at the start of this century. It wasn’t a great game – too many long balls, from Scunthorpe in particular, for my taste – but as a neutral it was fascinating to watch the reaction of the crowd to the referees.

In the eleventh minute, Scunthorpe striker Tom Hopper followed one of those long balls over the top of the MK defence. Just inside the penalty area, he beat the keeper to the ball, heading it to his left, then collided with the keeper, who by this time had stopped and was holding his arms in the air, realising he wasn’t going to beat Hopper to the ball. Two defenders were in close attention, and one of these picked up the loose ball (which they likely would have done even if Hopper hadn’t gone to ground) and cleared.

The crowd screamed for a penalty, but none was given. The fans around me moaned about it for 20 minutes. The linesman directly in front of me received abuse for the rest of the first half. The Scunthorpe bench harangued the fourth official (like it was his fault). All three officials were booed off the pitch at half-time.

The Game of Moans could do with more levity

Game 22, 2016-17

"And so ends this instalment of The Game of Moans," I announce as I blow the final whistle. The player standing near me starts to laugh. "Heh, sorry about that," he says. "I know it was pretty bad today." I point out that it's always pretty bad. But really I'm just delighted that he laughed - it doesn't happen often enough on the football pitch.

Gareth and Cristiano setting an example
- football's just for fun, right guys?

Next I walk up to the home team's left back. A few minutes earlier he'd made a fairly sour comment about me needing glasses. In keeping with the Artur Alt Philosophy of "Hear less, see more", I decided to ignore him. Two weeks ago I'd have pompously show him a yellow card. "Thanks for your touching concern about my eyesight," I say, "but in fact I already wear contact lenses." For the first time all game he cracks a smile too, then shakes my hand...

The wisdom of Artur Alt, a ref for 56 years

Game 21, 2016-17

"Hear less, see more." That's the advice of 77-year-old Artur Alt, who's been refereeing for 56 years. This past August, according to a feature in the latest issue of the magnificent German monthly football magazine 11 Freunde, Mr. Alt refereed his 8000th game. In the last 1000 games he says that he's only shown two red cards. "He's very relaxed at dealing with agitated players," says a fellow member of the club he represents, TSV Steppach near Augsburg (in Germany every ref must be a member of a club, whose games he or she then never officiates).

Artur Alt: still an inspiration after 8000
games (pic: Conny Marbach/11 Freunde)

I thought of Artur Alt yesterday afternoon at the end of a boys U15 game. The two losing coaches were looking for someone to blame. I could see them marching towards me as the home team shook my hands, and the dejected away team trooped off the field. I knew they weren't coming over to wish me well and thank me for turning out on a wet, windy afternoon. They'd already spent the entire 70 minutes of the game screaming, "Referee!" at every single hint of contact. They'd only shut up when I threatened to send them off.

Away they went. Hey ref, why did you give a free-kick for that foul on the edge of the area when it had clearly been a penalty? Also, had I not heard the insult? They were both babbling so fast that it was impossible to determine who had been insulted and when. I should have pointed out that they had spent so much of the game screaming at their players (and so, to be balanced, had the home coach) that it would have been impossible to hear any insult on top of their ranting. But I only thought of that later, so I wrote it up in my match report.

Yellow leaves, yellow cards, mellow fruits and the smell of weed

Game 20, 2016-17

Yet again it's a gorgeously warm weekend, despite the first yellow notes of autumn. My game's south of the city, across the river and then five miles through the forest. The whole world's out doing normal Sunday afternoon things. Couples cross the foot bridge holding hands, on their way to an art gallery or a museum. Others lie by the water, reading books, unpacking picnics, drinking a beer. In the woods, people are dog-walking, bird-watching, horse-riding.

Where John Keats might suggest spending
 Sunday afternoons (with a fat joint).  

The strong smell of weed hits me before I see two young men finishing off a joint and flipping the tab end away. That's something else I wouldn't mind doing on a day like this. But hang on a minute, I'm already at the ground, and these young men are walking in there too, just ahead of me. One of them stretches out his arms and runs on to the field like an aeroplane. His friend laughs and then they make their way towards the away team's changing room. Well, maybe today's game will be all relaxed and mellow fruitfulness.

Yeah, right. It only takes 13 minutes before the first histrionics...