Members Blogs

If your lucky as a Referee to go out on the field supported by two neutral assistant referee's, you have to have complete confidence in them. You may never have worked together before, but after 10 minutes you need to have faith in them. A good assistant can make a referee look great, a bad one can make him look incompetent. A brave assistant can help a referee when he maybe is about to make a mistake. This week in the Europa League match there was an incident where Stuart Atwell gave a penalty. However his assistant assistant referee (the guy by the goal) stepped in and appeared to inform him that it wasn't a penalty. This meant he restarted with a drop ball. A situation like that you have to be confident that the assistant is...

After admiring this fund raising effort from afar for a couple of years, I've decided to become involved. If you feel like donating some cash to help tackle men's health problems, notably testicular and prostate cancer (which contributed to my grandfather's death), then shuffle to the address below and drop some pennies off for my slug balancing act. http://mobro.co/BrianHamilton Thanks (Day 3 below) Continue reading...

A player must get a yellow card if he removes his shirt or covers his head with his shirt. Even if he already got a yellow card. But there’s some extra information in Law 12 in the Laws of the game. It’s all in case of the ‘celebration of a goal’ (the name of the header on page 116). What will you do if a player puts of his shirt when he walks to the sideline because he’ll be substituted? Would you do the same as the referee below? Player involved is Samuel Inkoom from Dnjepr Djnepropetrovsk in the game against Karpaty. Continue reading...

Things have been a bit quiet around here recently, so I thought id give a quick update on what been going on. Well from a football point of view not a massive amount, well compared to normal. So if you read this, you will know that I decided during the summer to step down to Level 5. Unfortunately due to even more work commitments that weren't expected when I made that decision Ive actually had to put active Refereeing on hold. This wasn't something I wanted to do, however I just cant do everything, as much as I try. If I can rectify one of the time commitments I hope to return but I cant see that happening at the moment, unless I can strike lucky with a major change (new job closer to home). However Ive not complexly...

or Piss take which ever you prefer. Just found this while looking for any evidence of the rumour that Steve Claridge has been playing in non matching boots for Gosport Borough Continue reading...

It's been another crazy fortnight in the world of football. Last week I squeezed in an assessment for a referee aspiring to move up to Supply football, Week 4 of the new referee's course a Supply League assessment and a Supply League Assessors meeting. The game on Tuesday was interesting as the referee decided to delay the kick off to allow a huge thunderstorm to pass by before getting the game under way. The rain had been coming down hard for an hour before kick off and just as the referee led the two teams out, it stopped. The game opened at a frantic pace with the home side going 3-0 down in the first 13 minutes. They fought back but finished up losing 4-3. Tuesday's reports have been finished and e-mailed. I've prepared a report...

In short, the tweak on Sunday has turned out to be just that ... a tweak. Unfortunately I have picked up a throat infection and cannot train. Oh well, off to Alton Towers on Friday!!! Continue reading...

Read the signs ... With tomorrow's local Community Shield game and my second assessing commitment of the season on Tuesday, together with a two day family trip to Alton Towers on Friday/Saturday, I would only have the opportunity to train twice this week. One of those opportunities was this morning. Paul had hoped to join me but had a prior engagement at the Leeds Dog Trust Open Day where he got Bob from! I should have have recognised all the warning signs and decided to go back to sleep. Firstly my wife said she was going to walk the dog on the field we use for training. Last time she did that while I was training, I strained my Achilles; sign #1. The heavens opened and we had a long and sustained downpour; sign #2. My wife decided...

Happy feet ... My new trainers seem a lot bigger than their predecessors even though they're the same brand. My wife says they make my feet look smaller. Either way I got through training tonight with the minimum of fuss, apart from feeling heavy legged and it being a little too warm for comfort. After the warm up we kept it simple by running for 2 minutes and walking for 1 minute, repeated 4 times (total running time 8 minutes), then took a 2 minute rest before repeating the same exercise but running anti clockwise instead of clockwise. A rest of 2 1/2 minutes this time and then we repeated the same 4 runs again. With the season starting on Saturday and a few other things lined up, it's going to be difficult to train regularly over...

Having thrown away my trainers last night because of the smell, I set off shopping and found these little beauties (Nike T-Lite IX) in the Direct Sports sale. Continue reading...

And into the bin they go ... It's been a busy couple of days as the start of the season approaches. I tidied up a presentation intended as an introduction to the assessment process and sent it on to someone who might use it. Yesterday saw the arrival of my first assessment appointments of the season so they were accepted this morning. I also did some work on getting the marks together for submission to the County FA in support of our local promotion candidates. I also squeezed in notification of my very limited availability for assessing in September and an update on some administration for a forthcoming new referee's course. This course is slightly different for me as it's the first where I won't actually be delivering any training...

You may remember a few years ago Cameroon were meant to wear the below kit. However FIFA decided to spoil the fun and made them wear a black shirt underneath as the Laws of the Game say there must be sleeves Yesterday while working on a new referee's course, there was a lady's match taking place at the same time. It was spotted very quickly that one of the players was wearing a sleeves shirt. What appeared to be the case was that she had in fact rolled them up and the shirt wants sleeveless. However it caused a bit of debate about the right thing to do. Opionin was that there should be sleves so the player should be asked to roll them down. How would you have handled it? Continue reading...

Check out the ball spinning antics of this Assistant Referee. Always good to keep a low profile! Continue reading...

A crafty attempt to distract an opponent during the Flamengo vs America Mineiro game Seen via Off the post Continue reading...

As part of Mars tie up with the FA as part of the Just Play initiative they have released the following video Continue reading...

Ive seen this story now twice in the last few days and what a load of pants. So the story being reported that the Referee sent off six players during an FA Youth Cup clash between Newport County and Bath City Academy. The reason being that they were wearing white pants under their shorts whcih could be seen. The Sun rreports this as a little known FA Rule. its not a FA Rule, but a FIFA law. This would then be cascaded down to the FA Rules as a result. This has been in place for many years now. Also there not exactly pants looking at the picture but cycling shorts . However from a practical refereeing point of view. This should have been spotted during the pre match jewelry and equipment checks. If was done and these were not...

Easing in gently ... After stopping training 4 weeks ago because an injury, then being laid up because of a cold/cough and a number of family commitments, I decided to get back out there on Friday. It was time to see just how much my fitness had deteriorated in that time. The answer was LOADS! Neil was also back with us and Paul had a mild strain of his soleus tendon (I know how that hurts) so we decided to jog a lap of our field which is about 670m. We jogged one lap, then took a minute or so rest and repeated the lap. We actually did 6 laps in total and then had a jog/walk to cool down before doing a few calf stretches. Calories 770, average heart rate 86%, maximum intensity 19%, had intensity 43% Continue reading...

My start to the season has been stop-start with various family commitments meaning that I haven't been available on as many Saturdays as I would have liked. They also prevented me from attending Day 2 of a new referee's course back in the middle of August. Professional footballers have suffered from this stop-start nature to their season for a number of years with the introduction of an international window in early September to allow for the playing of "friendlies" and qualifying games for international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup. It seems that the various federations around the world have recognised that no one wants to have an expensive Argentinian international in their team, if he's going to be unavailable for 6...

I was asked elsewhere what my view was on a position being adopted regarding allowing children to wear tracksuit bottoms while playing football. This was my response .. Personally I feel that "child protection" and "health and safety" are often cited not by those who genuinely care about the safety of the child/individual but who have one eye on the possible litigation that may follow if the low frequency/high loss scenario does occur. That is why I support the premise that a child should be exposed to risky situations, but those that can be managed. For example, the law(s of the game) requires me not to allow the wearing of tracksuit bottoms other than by a goalkeeper. If a child wants to wear tracksuit bottoms to play football, I...

It seems that my retirement from refereeing has gone unnoticed in one corner of the world as I got a phone call tonight asking me to referee a pre-season game for a local side. I retired in December 2009! The Secretary of the club was talking to me only a few weeks ago about how it was to be retired from the green stuff, as he is just about done with playing. His phone call came in near the start of the first Sunday League meeting of the new season. He should have been at the meeting so I politely declined his request and suggested he put in an appearance - he did and it saved him £20! Preparations for the new season have gone reasonably well with the fixtures prepared through to the end of the season. Last night saw me make a...