It’s a chant often heard at football games all around the world. “The referee’s a bastard”. Or “who’se the bastard in the black”. I’ll even confess to shouting it myself a few times. Like any football fan I get frustrated – to put it mildly – whenever a referee makes a bad decision, one so blatantly wrong that you have to question the sanity, the vision and the impartiality of the man. And all this from my excellent vantage point high up in the South Stand at Pittodrie.
It has always bothered me how a referee, armed with the rules of the game and assisted by two linesmen as well as a fourth official can ever make a mistake. The rules of the game are simple, always have been. You keep up with the play, you watch the action, you make your impartial decisions based on the letter of the law. Coaches, players and supporters cannot influence you, because you have the rules of the game on your side.
Based on this unyielding belief that the rules, well, rule, at 0830 this morning, with a cold westerly wind blowing the rain across the astroturf, Inside Left had to stand in as referee for his daughters hockey game. I’m thinking this can’t be hard, a bunch of 8 year-olds couldn’t give me any trouble, even if I don’t actually know the rules of the game.
But from the second the game kicked off – or whatever a hockey game does – the action was frantic. The ball went everywhere: over the line, partly over the line, behind the goal line. The hockey sticks started going high and the game got a bit more physical than I had anticipated. 5 minutes into the game, the thing I had secretly dreaded: the first shout. “Oi, ref!!!”, shouted the coach of the other team, “that was never their throw-in, it came off their own player”. He’s looking at me, the hands outstretched like Jesus in a tracksuit expecting me to make a decision. The truth is, I didn’t see a thing. Or, at least, I didn’t see who touched it last. I just sort off, well, assumed …
Ten minutes into the game, another contentious decision. Our team scores (a lovely cross from the left, excellent first touch to control the ball, a turn on the heels, a short pass to our onrushing winger who fires it past the goalkeeper). Sadly, the shot came from outside the 11 metre line – it doesn’t count. I blow my whistle, proud of my righteous impartiality, when my daughter and her team-mate who scored the goal came over and said “Dad, whose side are you on?”. And so it went on. Difficult decisions, shouts from both benches, frantic end-to-end action and I’m finding it hard to keep up with the play and see what is going on.
Towards the end of the game, our team 2-1 down and with only 2 minutes left on the clock, the ball breaks lose in midfield. It somehow ends up at the feet of our pacey center-forward who, with a deft touch of the stick takes it past the last defender and bears down on goal. I’m running behind her, slightly off the pace but there is no doubt in my mind she’s going to score. I have to put the whistle in my mouth to prevent me from screaming “go aun, fucking get it in there”. With no other defenders around her she’s clear through, one on one with the keeper. “An easy chance” I’m thinking. As she pulls the trigger and shoots I’m already blowing the whistle for a goal and rather convincingly start pointing my left arm back towards the center circle. A split second later I look back at the goal and realise she only gone and fired wide. It skims of the post mind, but fucking wide nevertheless. There’s only a minute to go now and there’s nothing I can do, no matter how much I want to, to help my daughters team get back on level points. Even the 3 minutes injury time I conjure up from nowhere proves fruitless, so I blow the whistle just as the other team look like they’re about to score. 2-1. At home. If only I had allowed that goal in the first half, we’d have had a point. Fuck sake.
It was my first ever performance as referee and, I hope, not the last. But while I enjoyed it immensely, sitting in the car on the way home, I suddenly realised just how hard a referee’s job actually is. For one, no matter how impartial you try to be, we are human and favouritism seeps through no matter how hard you try to deny it. An example – in the first half the ball went out of play. I didn’t see who it came off last to be honest, so I weighed up giving my daughters team the ball (which might be considered biased) or the other team (perhaps more sportsman-like, but also a potentially biased decision). Another example: midway through the second half, a stramash in the far corner. The ball goes over the line, right in front of the oppositions team’s parents. All the players start shouting it was their ball, the parents are shouting for their own team – and everyone’s looking at me. I rather meekly whistled for a corner to our team, much to the disbelief and disgust of half the pitch.
I didn’t see it, I’ve no idea who it came off last, and I didn’t have the benefit of replays, goal line technology or a linesman to consult. I made a decision – a deeply, profoundly biased one, favouring my daughters team.
The point of all this is that we are all – referee’s included – human. We make mistakes, we have biases not matter how much you try to hide it. You may not support the teams whose game you are officiating at, but the crowd influence you, the players influence you, the coaches influence you to the point where impartiality becomes blurred and the letter of the law disappears in favour of not getting yer heed stoved in, whether on a hockey pitch – or in a dark street in the center of Glasgow one night.
The next time a referee makes a bad decision in a game I’m watching, I might not shout as much as I used to. Make no mistake – it’s a tough gig. And dont get me wrong: I’m not saying they’re always right and I am certainly not in favour of introducing technology into a game that is already in danger of becoming sterile and boring under the weight of ever increasing petty rules (such as the absurd yellow-carding of players celebrating a goal), but after today, for the first time ever, I think I’m beginning to understand.
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