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The avuncular one
Life as a human being always seems to lend itself to the question of why? This may also be the case for other animals of course, but as they lack the ability to communicate anything more complex than "I am hungry!" or "let me out for a pee before I soil your carpet", we will have to assume for now that the question of "why?" is a human only question. In fact you are probably asking yourself “why” right now, in the form of the question "why am I reading this nonsense?" And if you’re not, you should be asking why not why not?
I digress, to skip gaily back to my point, we are forever asking why. Why are we all here on this spinning ball rock in space? Why does a plane stay in the air and not drop to the ground like shaped metal with wings? Why do we love sex so much? Why do I like the taste of my favorite food? Why do whales jump out of the sea? And why on earth does anyone become a referee?
Let's ask that last question again; Why on earth does anyone become a referee? Why? Why? Why? A thousand times why?
Funnily enough, this is the question you are most likely to hear from absolutely anyone when you first tell them you are a football referee. By no coincidence at all, this is also the question you, as a referee, will be asking yourself during an unrelenting storm of abuse when you wave away a dubious last minute home team penalty claim during a basement division bore draw played out on a cabbage patch, hill of a pitch in the teeming down rain which only makes the whole thing feel like it has more in common with a tough mudder endurance event than a football match *deep breathe and quick ponder why I didn’t use more punctuation in that paragraph* And sometimes there are bad days....
So, really, why on earth do people become referees?
Is it the lure of scrambling up the greasy pole of the promotion system and becoming a well paid professional referee? To be applying the laws of the game in front of 50,000 fans at Old Trafford on a live televised match? Some of us may harbour this ambition deep down inside, especially the youngsters who walk among us, but this is likely to remain a dream for nearly all of us. A professional referee officiating in the professional game? Professional football is now as much a part of the entertainment business as it is a sport. It is WWE wrestling with less scripting, but sadly at times, just as much play acting at times. It’s not for the players, the beleaguered referees, the heavily moneyed team owners, the shouty managers or the army of team officials and support staff - it is for the paying customers, sometimes grouped under the misleading and antiquated title of “supporters”. They pay their hard earned cash to watch grossly overpaid superstar players kick a ball around a well manicured patch of turf with levels of skill us mere mortals can only drool over, while the much maligned referee tries to make sure they behave in a manner which is within the laws of the game. All involved are paid professionals, it is their job. It is what they are paid handsomely to do. But it also has very little to do with the game we see played out on lumpy, cold, unsheltered council park pitches where us amateurs enjoy the game. It also has nothing to do with why us grassroots referees become referees. Both games share a book of laws, the magic booklet, or to provide it with its real and grand title, The Laws of the Game. One law book, one set of laws, two at times completely different games
So, if we can say that that it is not for the aforementioned fame (or notoriety), we can also say with some certainly that it is not the financial rewards that attract people to refereeing. It is no secret that there is no money in grass roots football. So it's must be something else. Something simple, something intrinsic. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the same reasons we grassroots referees pull on the black is also the same reason grass roots players pull on a team strip. The same reason grassroots managers and coaches teach and train people to play the game. The same reason supporters turn up and cheer their grass roots teams on. We all love football. Purely and simply, we love it. It is part of our identity. It provides a backdrop to our otherwise “normal” lives. Normal lives containing such things as having gainful employment (wage slavery), getting married (a different kind of slavery), spawning offspring (you get the idea). Marriages begin and end, jobs are lost or change and children grow older and leave home, but football is always there. It gives our Saturdays a meaning. It gives our weekends a meaning. **** it, it gives life a meaning! We love the game known as football.
And it could be argued that we referees love football so much, we want to be a part of it so badly, that we agree despite all the reservations that perhaps we have lost our minds, to become custodians of the laws of the game and pledge allegiance and loyalty to the magic book. And despite all that loyalty to the game, we are rewarded by being flatly told that the game of football is not for us!
"Football is for the players!" is the cry heard around the land, “it’s not for you!”. I have heard this statement many times and have spent a lot of time thinking on it and can say with no hesitation that I am unable to agree with it. Let's all take a moment to quietly meditate on the statement. Go on, close your eyes and meditate on it briefly. Now open your eyes like a newborn babe, ripped into life from the exit ramp of your mommies reproductive system and squinting through tiny eyelids for the first time realise that football is never really just for the players. Never is that the case. At the professional levels it is about a sliding scale of moneybags and entertainment, depending on how far up the ladder you go. But at a grassroots level it is about something very different. It is not just for the players - It is also for the frustrated and now-too-old-to-play-the-game-any-longer, team managers living vicariously through their younger and fitter charges. The hardened supporters who feel duty bound to attend games when they can, rain or shine. And I would also suggest that it is for the man in black, the referee. Yes I said it, it is also for the referee. After all why would it not be? We referees love football, otherwise why would we do what we do? We have already established that it is not for the tiny little match fee that is begrudgingly handed over after games, that much is beyond question! In fact our dedication to actually learning the laws of the game (and training ourselves to refer to them as LAWS and not RULES), keeping ourselves in a good state of fitness and diligently reporting for duty every weekend surely means we love the game MORE than anyone else involved. We are prepared to be hated and abused just to be still involved. Okay possibly an overload of drama in that last sentence, but set your brain organ to cogitate on this info nugget; even though some of us are clearly past our best in terms of age and physical condition, we still proudly put on the black and take to the muddy, freezing cold battlefield whenever an appointment is graciously handed to us... all in the name of the love of the game.
So with this in mind, let us refine the statement that football is FOR the players. How about grassroots football is ABOUT the players, but grassroots football is FOR everyone. EVERYONE. For without players there would be no game and without referees, sooner or later the whole thing descends into chaos and the game dies. Football, it may be said, could be likened to a co-dependent relationship. A relationship which was once upon a time loving and accepting but with the passing of time has sadly become resentful and abusive as it has lost sight of what the game of football is really all about. And what it is really about is having a good time and enjoying a shared experience. Before the huge amounts of money, before the crazy media frenzy fascination, before winning and losing became a matter of life and death and sportsmanship be damned, it was fun. And as if isn’t enough of a kick in the soft but easily pained parts to be told the game is not for us, we referees are then forced to endure the growing, media fueled belief that we actually spoil football – told by some that we are a cancer, ruining football for all! With our RULES. Like we personally get to just make them up!
And yet even this does not deter us. We still pull on the black, week after week. Rain, sun, frost or otherwise, we are there. Through the dissent, the abuse or wonderful and much wished for complete indifference. Whistle in hand. For the love of the game.
For the love of the game.
Agree? Disagree? Couldn't care less but feel gipped that you just read that long, rambling nonsense (sorry no life-you're-never-getting-back refunds)? Go ahead and pull that swirling thought from your thinking hole and spurt it into the world using the comments box below.
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