Being a "retired" referee has never sat too well with me and for a long time I felt I still had something to offer out on the green stuff.
I get a lot of satisfaction from my work as a Referee Tutor working on behalf of The FA, converting players, coaches and volunteers into qualified referees in the hope that they will enjoy the "dark" side of football as much as I did. I also take a lot of professional pride in the reports I write after each time I have been out to assess a referee. I'm hoping that they take something of value out of the reports and it helps their game. I value the friends I've made through refereeing, some have reached the dizzy heights of the professional game in England and appear on my TV screen almost every Saturday night, while others are happy to stay in junior football or pub football on Sunday mornings.
Unfortunately neither the tutoring nor assessing make up for the "rush" of being out in the middle of a field when a game is going on around you. I miss the banter, the decision making and dare I say it, the dissent. Regular readers will know I began training in the summer and progress was slow after nearly a year out. It was slow because I was worried about picking up an injury which would ruin my holiday, rather than before when I refereed, where I was worried I would miss a game. That game missed might be the one that got me noticed, got me a Cup Semi Final or even a Final, that game just became too important.
Coupled with my aspirations at the time to pass the fitness test and have a crack at football at a higher level, I was pushing myself too hard for a person who has a heart condition, numerous injuries in the past from which I never recovered properly and also for my weight (more than 110KG)/age (48). So how to address this itch that couldn't be scratched without causing lasting damage?
Well the first step was to re-register with my County FA as an active referee. As I had only let my registration lapse at the end of 2009-10 I retained my level 5 and didn't have to attend any kind of examination. How embarrassing it would have been to do that and fail??? I completed my registration over the 'phone yesterday lunch time and then phoned the Appointments Secretary of the local Sunday League. He had no games ... disaster, the comeback was on hold!
The 'phone rang again three hours later and he had received a backword for a game less than 2 miles from my home ... did I want it? The thoughts of breaking down during the game, making bad decisions, being assaulted (verbally and physically) by players all went through my head before I said ... yes. So the comeback is on, tomorrow (Sunday) morning I will referee my first game since refereeing in my jeans when I went to watch one week and the referee hadn't turned up. I'm sure it has the potential to be a mistake on so many levels, but I need to scratch that itch.
Match report to follow ...
Continue reading...
I get a lot of satisfaction from my work as a Referee Tutor working on behalf of The FA, converting players, coaches and volunteers into qualified referees in the hope that they will enjoy the "dark" side of football as much as I did. I also take a lot of professional pride in the reports I write after each time I have been out to assess a referee. I'm hoping that they take something of value out of the reports and it helps their game. I value the friends I've made through refereeing, some have reached the dizzy heights of the professional game in England and appear on my TV screen almost every Saturday night, while others are happy to stay in junior football or pub football on Sunday mornings.
Unfortunately neither the tutoring nor assessing make up for the "rush" of being out in the middle of a field when a game is going on around you. I miss the banter, the decision making and dare I say it, the dissent. Regular readers will know I began training in the summer and progress was slow after nearly a year out. It was slow because I was worried about picking up an injury which would ruin my holiday, rather than before when I refereed, where I was worried I would miss a game. That game missed might be the one that got me noticed, got me a Cup Semi Final or even a Final, that game just became too important.
Coupled with my aspirations at the time to pass the fitness test and have a crack at football at a higher level, I was pushing myself too hard for a person who has a heart condition, numerous injuries in the past from which I never recovered properly and also for my weight (more than 110KG)/age (48). So how to address this itch that couldn't be scratched without causing lasting damage?
Well the first step was to re-register with my County FA as an active referee. As I had only let my registration lapse at the end of 2009-10 I retained my level 5 and didn't have to attend any kind of examination. How embarrassing it would have been to do that and fail??? I completed my registration over the 'phone yesterday lunch time and then phoned the Appointments Secretary of the local Sunday League. He had no games ... disaster, the comeback was on hold!
The 'phone rang again three hours later and he had received a backword for a game less than 2 miles from my home ... did I want it? The thoughts of breaking down during the game, making bad decisions, being assaulted (verbally and physically) by players all went through my head before I said ... yes. So the comeback is on, tomorrow (Sunday) morning I will referee my first game since refereeing in my jeans when I went to watch one week and the referee hadn't turned up. I'm sure it has the potential to be a mistake on so many levels, but I need to scratch that itch.
Match report to follow ...
Continue reading...
