A&H

Relaxing After a Sunday

JBeil

Active Member
Level 5 Referee
How do you get rid of the lingering grumbles after your sunday morning games? It seems like no matter what my performance, the losing team is always convinced it's my fault, and recently it's been getting to me for the rest of the weekend. What do you do to discharge the stress after your games?
 
The Referee Store
Sunday football is an odd one. I took a break for a few years because I’d had enough of the behaviour you described. It did me a lot of good.

Some things that did work for me though included going and doing a youth game; helps to get the next game on the board and became the most recent one.

A shorter game - request the younger age groups up to U14 so it’s 70 minutes worked as nice warm down physically too and refreshed and reset me mentally.

Alternatively bin the Sunday men’s and take up something else; if you need fixtures there are Sunday AM youth leagues or even Ladies games in the PM. Making the step away from Sunday mens football might be what you need.
 
Alot of it comes with experience. Once you've done 100s of games it just natural becomes easier because you've experienced almost everything on multiple occasions and it all just seems a lot less of a big deal, things just seem smaller. You gain perspective.

It's a ballance but I'm a big believer in if you're finding it hard then enjoy the challenge of getting through it and getting better. Obviously if it's seriously effecting you then sack it off but if you can then take it on and embrace the challenge. It's life experience.

The easy thing to do is quit (and some people just need to do that as they don't have the mental capacity to deal with it at certain points in their life. But if you can then keep going.
 
Did a rare (for me) Sunday game this morning to help out the new appointments secretary. No cards, no sin bins and really enjoyed it. To answer OP question though, just go to the pub!
 
Sunday football is an odd one. I took a break for a few years because I’d had enough of the behaviour you described. It did me a lot of good.

Some things that did work for me though included going and doing a youth game; helps to get the next game on the board and became the most recent one.

A shorter game - request the younger age groups up to U14 so it’s 70 minutes worked as nice warm down physically too and refreshed and reset me mentally.

Alternatively bin the Sunday men’s and take up something else; if you need fixtures there are Sunday AM youth leagues or even Ladies games in the PM. Making the step away from Sunday mens football might be what you need.

I've decided that if I get to level 5 at the end of the season, I'll be dropping Sunday morning OA and moving back to youth. Younger groups are less game time, money is similar and I'll finish the game less stressed. That's what I found the first few seasons, when I did youth. I'm quite looking forward to it actually.

I know of another L5 who's pretty much guaranteed to get L4 and has said they want to drop Sunday morning OA due to how players behave etc. I don't blame them.
 
Interesting, that once I went to level 4 I also dropped all Sunday football and only refereed Saturday.
Back then I was getting a game every week but now I just pick up Saturday football in between games, but even so I am doing that less as the days are (ALOT) longer so losing more family time which gain back on the free weekends.
 
After I got to L5 around 7 years ago, I simply lost the urge to get up before 8am on a Sunday morning and go out into the cold and rain to supervise a bunch of snarling, tattooed 30-40 somethings on some windswept hill in Somerset. :rolleyes:

Sunday morning OA football is just something other referees do now. :D
 
You could walk away from doing Sunday games as others have suggested but you've asked how to discharge stress after the game. I'll try not to get too deep here.

To me, stress from officiating at any game is self-generated. Unless of course you are threatened or assaulted. You either allow the moaning, whinging and verbal abuse to get to you or you don't. What you mustn't do is take it personal. Once you take it personal, you will start to get stressed. But stress that you are feeling as a result of a football game could be brought on by other things going on in your life. The feeling of stress is as a result of a chemical imbalance in your body. Your body releases Cortisol to combat stress. This can be as a result of lack of sleep, bad eating habits, lack of exercise or other things that are playing on your mind. You have to look at someone juggling plates (you may not be old enough to remember TV entertainers that used to juggle plates on various poles) You juggle 4 or 5 plates and everything is fine, add a 6th and 7th and they all come tumbling down. It's the same with stress, if you have a few things on the go, maybe struggling with sleep, maybe a few worries around work, family or college/uni then the football match could be the 6th or 7th plate that creates the stress.

The way to combat it is to create Dopamine in your body, this is the 'feel-good' hormone that combats stress. You get this when you exercise or when you receive some good news or take part in an activity that makes you feel good. You don't get this from alcohol by the way.

So, my advice would be to look at anything else that may be causing you stress first, see if you can do anything about them, check to see if you are taking the abuse as personal to you, see what your diet, sleeping and exercise regimes are like and take things from there.

2 more things, try not doing a Sunday league game but going to watch one instead. See how people react to a different referee, guaranteed it will be the same. Then finally, once your game has finished, write down flash points in your game. Could you have avoided that booking, or red card. Should you have issued a yellow or red to avoid an escalation later on? One player in particular was moaning throughout, could I have managed him differently? Could I have used the sinbin? Was there a decision that changed the way players were? I had a Sunday league game yesterday and sent a player to the sinbin after 55 seconds, a record for me. It was warranted and just plain stupid of the player. I had no dissent for the rest of the game though.

I've reflected after a game and identified a decision I made about a throw in 10 minutes before a sin bin and subsequent red card for offinabus. The players had a great sense of misjustice as a result of my decision which on reflection may have been wrong. Had I got that right then the subsequent events may have been avoided.

Once this reflection has been carried out and written down, I write another note on how to improve myself next time. I just find it helps writing it down. It also helps reading my notes before my next game as it helps to focus my mind. This helps to put that game to bed. I then go and do an activity that I enjoy and the game is forgotten about.

Might work for you, might not, I hope that some if this is helpful though.

Best of luck
 
After I got to L5 around 7 years ago, I simply lost the urge to get up before 8am on a Sunday morning and go out into the cold and rain to supervise a bunch of snarling, tattooed 30-40 somethings on some windswept hill in Somerset. :rolleyes:

Sunday morning OA football is just something other referees do now. :D

I've been doing Sunday League just up the road since I moved down to an area between Bath and Bristol 2 years ago and I must say that 75% of my games are an absolute dream. Yeah some of the City teams are a pain but the majority of the teams I've done have been almost perfect to referee. It's the last thing I was expecting after refereeing in the Sheffield Sunday Leagues and playing in the Manchester OA Sunday Leagues for 15 years.
 
You could walk away from doing Sunday games as others have suggested but you've asked how to discharge stress after the game. I'll try not to get too deep here.

To me, stress from officiating at any game is self-generated. Unless of course you are threatened or assaulted. You either allow the moaning, whinging and verbal abuse to get to you or you don't. What you mustn't do is take it personal. Once you take it personal, you will start to get stressed. But stress that you are feeling as a result of a football game could be brought on by other things going on in your life. The feeling of stress is as a result of a chemical imbalance in your body. Your body releases Cortisol to combat stress. This can be as a result of lack of sleep, bad eating habits, lack of exercise or other things that are playing on your mind. You have to look at someone juggling plates (you may not be old enough to remember TV entertainers that used to juggle plates on various poles) You juggle 4 or 5 plates and everything is fine, add a 6th and 7th and they all come tumbling down. It's the same with stress, if you have a few things on the go, maybe struggling with sleep, maybe a few worries around work, family or college/uni then the football match could be the 6th or 7th plate that creates the stress.

The way to combat it is to create Dopamine in your body, this is the 'feel-good' hormone that combats stress. You get this when you exercise or when you receive some good news or take part in an activity that makes you feel good. You don't get this from alcohol by the way.

So, my advice would be to look at anything else that may be causing you stress first, see if you can do anything about them, check to see if you are taking the abuse as personal to you, see what your diet, sleeping and exercise regimes are like and take things from there.

2 more things, try not doing a Sunday league game but going to watch one instead. See how people react to a different referee, guaranteed it will be the same. Then finally, once your game has finished, write down flash points in your game. Could you have avoided that booking, or red card. Should you have issued a yellow or red to avoid an escalation later on? One player in particular was moaning throughout, could I have managed him differently? Could I have used the sinbin? Was there a decision that changed the way players were? I had a Sunday league game yesterday and sent a player to the sinbin after 55 seconds, a record for me. It was warranted and just plain stupid of the player. I had no dissent for the rest of the game though.

I've reflected after a game and identified a decision I made about a throw in 10 minutes before a sin bin and subsequent red card for offinabus. The players had a great sense of misjustice as a result of my decision which on reflection may have been wrong. Had I got that right then the subsequent events may have been avoided.

Once this reflection has been carried out and written down, I write another note on how to improve myself next time. I just find it helps writing it down. It also helps reading my notes before my next game as it helps to focus my mind. This helps to put that game to bed. I then go and do an activity that I enjoy and the game is forgotten about.

Might work for you, might not, I hope that some if this is helpful though.

Best of luck

Sounds like it works for you so in that respect it's great. For me that's just alot of effort! Your point about it not being personal and it being the same towards every ref is spot on. They're just spouting and whinging and unleashing some frustration. Deal with it and then forget it after the whistle. Forget it is the wrong phrase actually, just know that it's just a regular part of the game. They've forgotten it or moved on instantly so we should do the same.

I think if you've played alot of football you are at a huge advantage with this type of thing because you've seen it all a million times and you know what it is. It's just football nonsense and frustration. I'm the opposite to most in theis respect in that I'd find it impossible to care after the game unless I've made a huge gam3 changing error. Obviously I'd think about that but ultimately they make these in the PL so it's not unexpected that we make them at dog and duck! Move on.
 
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