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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

You've got no soul Ref!

Us refs are pretty well inured to most insults after years of being treated to the earthy if limited vocabulary of most footballers.
But I had to stop what I was doing midway through the match on Saturday when I suddenly heard a voice behind me shout; "Referee, you've got no soul." This was worse than being called a stupid fat c***, the insult of choice muttered behind my back so that there's no way of identifying the culprit. Me? No soul? I should have sent the bastard off.
And my sin? A player had gone down injured and in doing so had rolled off the pitch. He was not on the field of play so I had no need to stop the match. I imagine the trainer had seen his player lying on the ground holding his leg and could care for his poor, injured player.
Saturday's was an unusual match in that I received loads of abuse, but this time it was from the team that was winning. The general rule in park football is that the ref has been pretty good/ok/average if you've won but downright diabolical/hopeless etc etc if you lose. But this was a team second from bottom of the table leading the team second from top.
The outcome was the usual, half a dozen of them in the book for dissent. A few minutes from the end, the home manager, who was also running the line (Yes, this is what happens at this level!) started shouting from the touchline, "How long to go ref?" becoming increasingly infuriated when I decided to concentrate on the match and not to reply to him. His shouting became more and more abusive and I eventually, with one minute to go, relieved him of his flag, telling him to hop it.
As the players trooped off, the victorious goalkeeper decided to abuse me, so I booked him, and the manager joined in. (It turned out the goalkeeper was his son). Joining in the obscure insults theme, he called me a GATO and a tax collector.
Oh well, the match down in the muddy Weald of Kent wasn't much fun, but I picked up several new insults to add to the dictionary.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What's a 'GATO', some kind of marshland-dwelling reptilian creature? And did you find out who insulted you so?