Ref Off Blog - Why?

The general reaction on telling people that I am training to become a qualified referee is; “Why would you want to go and do a thing like that”. So, before you all judge me as some power mad saddo, these are the reasons:

1. Primarily, it is because my playing days have pretty much come to an end – old injuries and 18 years of being kicked with alarming regularity have led me to take the decision to hang my boots up – before that decision is made for me.
2. Believe it or not, referee’s have to be pretty fit and becoming a referee will mean I at least have to retain some sort of fitness level
3. Having played and watched football for the best part of two decades, I think I may have a decent enough understanding of the game to be quite good at it
4. You get paid
5. The slim possibility that this could be the start of something career based and in a few years time I could be rubbing shoulders with footballs elite.

Obviously, there are umpteen reasons why I wouldn’t want to be a referee – mainly, the inevitable volley of abuse that a referee gets week in week out for trying to do a ruddy difficult job to the best of their ability. It will be interesting to be on the receiving end of players’ frustrations, rather than dishing it out…
I myself, and I’m not particularly proud of this, in a moment of madness once called the referee “a specoid f**k” (he was wearing glasses). And do you know what? He didn’t even book me. I would have sent me off and will have no hesitation in doing so should something like this happen in a game I referee. I often think about that fella and hope he is still refereeing and not putting up with that sort of nonsense. In the unlikely event that he is reading this account, I am sorry.
If I give good honest decisions, keep up with play and talk to the players as I would be expected to be spoken to myself, I am hoping to avoid such unfortunate incidents. Still, at least I don’t wear glasses.

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