The Inside Forward - Men in Black: Part Two

Read Men in Black: Part One here

Adding to the already blossoming potential for disagreement and conflict on the pitch, we play our league games without linesmen so the poor referees have to make the offside calls as well as everything else. This can work surprisingly well with a fit young referee who can keep up with play, but that older gentleman, whose fitness is hampered by a few years of overindulgence, can surely only make a best guess.

Defending such a lack of mobility, one referee said to me that the reason he never leaves the centre circle is that every single player will have to pass him at least once a match. Sadly he never enlightened me about what he says to them when they do go by and unfortunately it never decreases the numbers of players disagreeing with his erratic offside calls either.

Making decisions is what we ask of them though, and unfortunately every time they do so there will be eleven players, one manager, a few substitutes and possibly someone walking their dog who will disagree with it.  Dealing with the varying levels of the inevitable vitriolic dissent is where the referee can really stamp his character on the game.

Many is the time our pre-match team talk has included the instructions to leave this particularly strict referee alone as he won’t tolerate any nonsense, no frustrated cries of disbelief or any tiny peeps of an argument. Not even a dramatic rolling of the eyes, which barely conceals your cursing of the heavens for sending down this man who dares to view your trademark two footed lunges as dangerous.

Five minutes in to the match, first free kick; player booked for dissent. Subsequently the manager ignores his own instructions and is yellow carded for complaining. This oh-so-familiar chain reaction led to our assistant manager having the worst disciplinary record of the team last year, despite not playing a minute of football.

We saw in the World Cup that all it took to make the players behave was to draw a line on the grass with shaving foam. In our league they’d be better off swapping their whistle for a taser gun. To deal with players who used some colourful language to disagree with him I knew one ref who would tell you he was going to ask you one question and to help out he’d even supply the answer, which was simply, “nothing.”

“Now young man,” he’d say in an accusing voice like he was a particularly pompous high court judge looking down at some young scamp, “the question is, what exactly did you just say to me?”

Unfortunately uttering the supplied answer was still beyond many players I’ve come up against whose total lack of self control could not stop them swearing their way into the book, there being nothing in the world to stem the flow of obscenities spewing from their mouths.

We all have our breaking points though, and my all-time favourite altercation came last season when I had the privilege of seeing every referee’s fantasies acted out after his judgement was once more called in to question by one particularly hapless, yet very persistently vocal, striker.

“I MAY BE SHIT SON, BUT I WILL NEVER BE AS SHIT AS YOU!”

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Inside Forward's Articles

The Inside Forward - Men in Black: Part One

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The Inside Forward - It's Training Men

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The Inside Forward - An Introduction