I have enormous sympathy for assistant refs and the abuse they get from spectators. In the premiership it's obscenities, spitting and objects being thrown. At a junior level with a few hundred people watching, it's likely to be a couple of spotty teenagers trying to impress their friends with their unpleasantness.
At my level, with a couple of dozen spectators on the touchline, there's more of a community feel to it. Yesterday, with most local matches off because of waterlogged pitches, I ran the line in a premier division match and enjoyed it throughly. The favourites hit every part of the woodwork but couldn't score while the underdogs had three big chances and put them all away. Their forwards, breaking fast and showing superb timing, tested my reactions severely and I'm pretty sure I got all those decisions right.
But the spectators were as one-eyes as can be. Decisions againt their own team were ALWAYS wrong and their players were constantly not getting the right decision from the ref, so they said.
Comments from behind me were frequently critical, informing me; "that's the fourth one you've got wrong lino".
In fact, as a ref, this is reassuring, because it simply reinforces the average referee's view that attitudes from the sidelines are to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. The time to think seriously is when a manager says, "oohhh that was a bad offside decision against their team."
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