Members Blogs

‘Referees in the media’ will be published each Monday on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading. “When the referee understood Czech, he got one more non-native language than I got.” Says goalie Dennis Eilhoff from Dynamo Dresden ironically. He took the stand for his Czech colleague Pavel Fort who got send off. According to Eilhoff referee Tobias Stieler misunderstood the words of the Czech player. I should have given PSV Eindhoven that penalty. Eric Braamhaar regrets he didn’t see the offence on Georginio Wijnaldum from PSV. He came back to his decision after the match and admitted he was wrong. I spoke many times with the referee about it, I didn’t understand. By Thiago...

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...

Fifth referee in SummerRefs comes from Milton Keynes in England. In this section refs from all over the world and all with different experiences will tell about their refereeing career and how they prepare for next season during this summer break. If you’re interested to take part, there are still a few weeks of summer for SummerRefs left. Let me know! Name: James campbell Age: 30 Hometown: Milton Keynes (England) Started refereeing: 1995 (eek) Grade: 5 Who do you think you are (as referee)? “I think i’m like Phil Dowd – not afraid to give a bit back and get respect from players but go with a smile on my face too. ” What are your goals in refereeing? “I have just got onto the Womens Premier League in England which is a great...

You may have noticed over on the right of the blog (yeah over there) an Amazon link for The Referee's or below if its not working for any reason This is a film that has been around for a couple of years following the Referee's at Euro 2008. Quite why its taken so long to come out here I don't know. I haven't seen it as yet, although have it on order for a few months now. However the guardian have a review of it on their site currently. One of the main parts of the film though I belive is Howard Webb and the Poland game where he gave the late penalty. I read an interview with the director where he had said up to that point it had been quite a boring job to work on where not a lot was happening.

Reading through the latest copy of fourfourtwo. I came across this amazing photo from Nurnberg vs Augsburg. It was taken by Peter Langenhahn and shows every foul that took place during the game. Its an impressive piece of work. To be honest this doesn't do it justice and you have to buy fourfourtwo to really get the most from it.

If your a sucker like me for Fantasy Football, then RefChat are running a league this season. Its quite simple register a team on http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ then once you've setup a team you will need to enter the code that is on the RefChat forum. I could tell you the code, but then if I did that you'd be missing out on visiting a great site. If you think youll do rubbish, dont worry I allways finish last.

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.

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...

‘Referees in the media’ will be published each Monday on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading. “Internationally we do fall into a serious vacuum. At the European Championships next year there will be no Belgian whistling, and in my estimation the chances for the WC 2014 are minimal.” By Belgian referee boss Robert Jeurissen about Frank DeBleeckere who has to stop at the end of this year. But he’s positive about Serge Gumienny who ‘hopefully will become an Elite referee soon’. “Thank God there was a possibility to be appointed for the final.” Says Argentine referee Sergio Pezzotta who officiated at the Copa Libertadores, his last big tournament before retirement...

While having a bit of a catch-up on this weekends football on Footytube. I noticed the highlights from Inter vs Celtic in the Dublin Cup. We do have Red Cards in Pre Season it seems after all.

Having been badgered by my wife for just about all of the close season to get some DIY tasks around the house and garden completed, with the first few weeks of Supply League appointments for match officials out yesterday, I thought I'd better get a move on. So it was back up in the loft to tackle the over active header tank inlet valve. We invested in a new inlet mechanism yesterday and a larger float (to shut the water off sooner). I found I didn't have the correct size wrench (doh! poor workman, etc.) so I swapped out the float and that seemed to do the trick. From there it was straight outside to complete the cleaning out of the gutters for the conservatory. We bought a new hose for this purpose 2 weeks ago after I had removed two...

Having sneezed earlier today I starting getting the sniffles as the afternoon progressed. I was also still suffering from pains in my feet, ankles, shins and calves from repeatedly training. Finally on arriving home I found my 6 year old son had returned from his week at his grandparents in Bedford. Each one of these events would have made me have second thoughts about training tonight, so I decided I would have a night off. The only problem is that I also need to take a night off on Monday as I am attending a meeting on Monday night in Doncaster. I've therefore decided that I might go do some training on Sunday and then again on Tuesday before wrapping my week up on Thursday. I might have to adopt a similar programme the following...

Referee Bill Hamilton talks about his wonderful experience at the Dana Cup, an international youth tournament in Hjørring, Denmark. The Scotsman leads the match between Macedonian and Norwegian pupils.

Patrice Evra was simply blocking a shot during a match between Manchester United and an MLS All Start team. But the AR wasn’t prepared for that … … and dropped down. In return he got a big hug from Evra.

The Fifa u20 World Cup will start tomorrow. Here are some disciplinary stats about last tournaments with some amazing matches with four red cards. The referees for this tournament are published here. Fifa says this tournament is a good springboard for young referees. “Five of them even directed a World Cup final: Arnaldo Coelho (BRA, 1982), Edgardo Codesal Mendez (MEX, 1990), Sandor Puhl (HUN, 1994), Horacio Elizondo (ARG, 2006) and Howard Webb (ENG, 2010)”, according to the Fifa press realease. All stats below are from Fifa’s databases and provide info of previous u20 World Cups. Most red cards in a match 4 Italy – Hungary 2009 4 Netherlands – Honduras 1995 3 Argentina – Netherlands 1983 3 Portugal – Argentina 1991 3 Spain –...

Beans+microwave=Burnt finger. Wednesdays are the days when the field is full of football teams training. One Ladies team, 2 junior teams and 2 male open age teams were on the field tonight. The two male teams appeared distracted by the Ladies team and they were too busy concentrating on trying to play football to notice. The training methods were very different. The males did a warm up run, some shuttles for fitness and then played some small sided football. The Ladies team appeared to go straight into small sided football without any fitness work. The junior teams both set off on a cross country run after some small sided games and skills development exercises. I always hated cross country running but these kids seemed to really...

This kept appearing in my goggle alerts and to be honest every day I see someone moan about a Referee so I paid little attention. However Ive just seen the video on Soccerblog and paid closer attention. Take a look at the video below and the two incidents in question. Incident 1) - DOGSO? Looking at the incident it appears that the defender pulls back the attacker as he is running through on goal. However while there appears to be contact it doesn't seem there is a pull so does the striker make the most of it? The other thing here is this a Obvious Goal Scoring Opportunity? Yes he is face to face with the keeper but he doesn't have control of the ball. I find this a tough one and with the angle the Referee has to the left of the...

A red card made Robert Schörgenhofer from Austria a referee. That was about twenty years ago, now he’s on the international refereeing list and going to the u20 World Cup in Colombia. “I was a football player and received a wrong red card”, says the Austrian referee to Dutch Referee Blog and World of Football Refereeing. “The referee had a very bad day and I thought, it can’t be so difficult and I can do it better. That is the reason why I start refereeing.” Robert Schörgenhofer. Photo provided by referee. Schörgenhofer is ready for the youth world cup. On the 12th of July he already got his first match of the 2011/2012 season. “The match in Linz served simultaneously as preparation for the u20 World Cup.” Country: Austria AUT Date...

Over on DutchReferee.com, there is a post relating to an incident from a recent game. It focuses on a penalty that was retaken multiple times. Would you do this? If so how many times before you allow it? Here the link to the post