Trying hard to avoid a straight red card

Game 35, 2016-17

Get the message,
get the t-shirt

First clash for points after the winter break, and it's Third v First in a boys' U17 league. As always, I check the disciplinary records of both teams. The first-placed team have only accrued eight cautions all season. The home team have been far less shy at disturbing the referee.

In the refs' changing room, I talk to the lad who's just finished whistling the U13 game before me. By coincidence, he plays for the second-placed team in the U17 league. When they played today's hosts, he tells me, "they tried to kick us off the park".

Does that mean I go into the game expecting trouble from the home team? Not at all - just as the game starts at 0-0, so does the punishment card. It does no harm, though, to be aware of a team's reputation...

Three-nil to the referee!

Games 33-34, 2016-17

It's half-time, and I'm already 3-0 up. I'm only the referee and I've scored a hat-trick! Such are my phenomenal football skills. At least, that's how it seems to the away team, whom we'll name here as Moaning FC (whereby FC does not denote 'Football Club').

When all is quiet on a weekend night, while Moaning
FC hatches its cunning plan to spring the offside trap.

It's a thankless game - part of a winter break tournament that both mens' teams of decent footballing pedigree are taking very seriously - because Moaning FC is playing the offside trap on a short turf field, and that always means trouble for the referee. Each one of the three goals scored by the home team, maintains Moaning, was clearly offside. From the bench to their followers right through all of its playing staff, the club's protests are not meek, and their opinions are loud and clear.

Seven yellow cards - must be a 'friendly'

Games 30-32, 2016-17

Three friendlies in four days to warm us up for the second half of the season. The first two games pass as you would hope - with very little bother, and just one card in 180 minutes. I'm grateful for this, as it helps me get back into the rhythm of refereeing. For the opening 20 minutes of my first game for two months, my mind was wandering until I could wrestle hold of my concentration.

On Saturday evening, I was mentally composing a column along the following lines: friendlies are the ideal in terms of player behaviour, but only the incentive of an arbitrary number of points for winning injects the game with enough needle to make football worth playing and watching over the long term. Not a massively profound theory, it's true, but I was hoping to raise a sporting-philosophical conundrum. Is it better to play in harmony and safety for the joy of the game and the exercise? Or is it better to play for points in a perpetually competitive atmosphere with the ever-present possibility that things will turn sour and maybe violent?

My error: 32 minutes was too late for the first caution

On Sunday, this poser was blown out the water by the third 'friendly', between two young, fit teams from levels 7 and 8 of the national tier, both of them doing well in their respective divisions. Ironically, one of the team's names translates as 'Friends of Sport'. Previous visits to this club have included a father throwing the key to the referee's changing room at me at the end of the game because I hadn't awarded his son's team a corner kick ten minutes earlier (they'd just lost to a last-minute goal), and a youth team coach who spent the entire game barking at his players and loudly contesting every last decision made against his team. Their crowd always has an opinion, at high volume...

Letter to IFAB, Part Four - The 35-yard-line

I'm including parts four to six of my Letter to the International Football Association Board as they all involve the (re-)introduction of the 35-yard-line. No, don't close the page - there is plenty to discuss here. It is certainly worth experimenting with a 35-yard line because it has the potential to radically improve the game in the following areas: offside, corner kicks, penalty kicks, and as a game-decider in cup ties.

How to end blatant encroachment
like this - use a 35-yard line.

FIFA technical director Marco van Basten's recently suggested law changes included using 35-yard line shootouts rather than spot-kicks to settle drawn cup ties. Unfortunately, it was dismissed without thought by most commentators simply because it was lumped in with van Basten's wacky idea to abolish offside.

Penalty shootout deciders are retained solely on the grounds that there's "no better alternative", yet actually testing out another method is barely considered. It's a shame, because penalties are more a test of nerve than skill, while the 35-yard shootout demands dribbling, shooting and technical abilities, and gives the goalkeeper a 50% chance of making a save. 

Letter to IFAB, Part Three - Allow one foot off the ground at throw-ins

Throw-ins are a thorough pain in the arse for referees. Players get annoyed if you call them, thinking you're being petty. Opposing players get annoyed if you don't call them, thinking that you are either lax, biased or don't know the laws. In the back of your mind you're always thinking, "This is one of those stupid laws that doesn't really affect the game either way - why not just let them hurl, punt or use a giant catapult to put the ball back into play?"

Getting away with foul throws at least since
 1963 (pic: unknown, via Sulgrave FC)

It's amazing how many players don't know the throw-in law. "What did I do wrong?" they whine after dropping the ball in, spiking the ball, standing half a foot inside the touchline, or lifting one or both legs half a yard off the floor as they throw. With very young players, I usually show them how to throw properly then let them take it again (note to coaches - you're welcome, though a five-minute session at training should put this right). At around the U13-U15 level, I tell them what they did wrong and allow a re-take. From that age level upwards I shout a quick critique, then the throw goes the other way, as per the laws.

Letter to IFAB, Part Two - Allow a subbed player to re-enter the game

My letter to IFAB made the following proposal on substitutions. More flexibility in this area seems a logical progression given current squad sizes, the increased number of players allowed on the bench, and the physical demands of the modern game.

Demonstration by numbers -
liberalise the substitution laws now! 

The rule already exists in amateur games at the lower levels of the German amateur game (where all substituted players may return to the game), and in the US college game - any subbed player may return to the game once in each half. That's a little over the top because it can make for too many stoppages, but most coaches don't use it excessively for the obvious reason that it's too disruptive to a team's rhythm.

The German FA recently made another move in this direction, with immediate effect, stipulating that in all men's and women's FA cup games teams may use a fourth substitute during extra-time. This will
almost certainly become the international standard in coming years, because there's nothing to speak against it.

2. SUBSTITUTIONS

Proposal: A player who has been substituted may return to the game once if all substitutes have been exhausted. Limit: one player per team.

Reason: Why should a team that suffers an injury after using all its substitutes be penalised by playing a man short?

How it will work: A single player on each team will be allowed to return to the field once during the course of the game to replace a team-mate, if that team has already used its allocation of three substitutes.

Consequences: Fairness and tactical flexibility. To avoid exploiting this new law for time-wasting, a period of one minute will be automatically added to the game for any such substitution.

Discuss, reject, ignore, tear apart etc. Suggestions 3-6 will follow in due course.

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. 

Letter to IFAB, Part One - Abolish the yellow-red card

Last year in the course of a Twitter exchange, the International Football Association Board - Fifa's sub-committee that every year examines and then tweaks the Laws of the Game - invited anyone who was interested enough to send them suggestions for amending the way that football is arbitrated. I could have written a book, but instead I focused on a handful of my more radical notions.

The dynamic IFAB Committee, possibly
 looking unimpressed with my proposals

IFAB's Technical Director David Elleray courteously wrote back to say, "Thank you for your comprehensive list of suggestions – The IFAB Technical Sub-Committee is currently reviewing the Laws of the Game and we will bear in mind your suggestions. They will also be potentially discussed in our future revision of the Laws of the Game strategy."

I'm not holding my breath, so before my revolutionary manifesto ends up in a Zürich waste-paper basket I'll present my ideas here for discussion. Please bear in mind that these are ideas to kick-start a dialogue, not a blueprint that I would impose on football if I was suddenly elected Fifa president.

The creeping melancholy of the mid-winter break

Game 29, 2016-17

It's just before midday and 45 minutes before kick-off. I'm waiting outside the locked changing rooms with players from both teams, and nobody seems to know who's got the key. "We had our Christmas party last night," a bleary-looking player from the home team tells me apologetically. "It went on until 5.30." A couple of his team-mates manage a tired, knowing smile. They're almost bottom of the table, with 14 points. The visitors are top, with 46. No one's expecting any shocks today.

Almost clean sheet - players too
hungover to argue? 

The home team represents Sunday football in all its glory - hopelessly disorganized and severely affected by last night's alcohol. Late arrivals dribble in looking pale and fragile, then once out on the pitch chug around like dysfunctional steam trains clanking between randomly programmed lower gears. The ball seems to be permanently just out of their control, as though it's being manipulated remotely by a snickering deity with nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than taunt hangover-prone amateur sportsmen. Somehow they hold out for 20 minutes until the league leaders finally go one-nil up.

The hosts do have one good player, though - a grey-haired but slim number 10 who controls their game...

Winter tames man, beast and footballer

Game 28, 2016-17

It's one degree centigrade, and the pitch is semi-frozen. Is it playable? I have no idea - I've never had to judge a frozen pitch before. Usually at this time of year teams play on turf or cinder, and the grass fields are locked and bolted until late spring. I run up and down it without falling over (always an achievement at my age), but that's nothing like turning on it with a ball at your feet.

Standard winter playing
 conditions, in 1980s England.

I think about the frozen English pitches I sometimes played on as a kid. During one foggy game the grass was stiff with frost, and all I could do was pray that I got substituted. We were losing by several goals to a team of big lads and I didn't care. All I wanted was to feel my frozen toes and fingers again. Finally my number came up and I ran for the changing room, faster than I'd run all afternoon. It was locked. Longing for warmth and the final whistle while on the touchline, it turned out, was even worse than longing for warmth while playing, when you could at least run around (there were no such thing as training tops in 1980s Lincolnshire).

So, according to my memory, you can play on a semi-frozen pitch, just not very well. But both teams are here and warming up vigorously. No one's falling over. Bugger it, if they're happy to play then let them. If people start slipping up and breaking limbs, I can always call it off.

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...