Stephen Smith is a Senior County Referee officiating from grassroots up to semi-professional level, but his involvement in football has reached the dizzy heights of linesman for Premiership reserves and FA Vase games. By day he is a university administrator.
Players understandably get frustrated when a referee stops the game too much and won’t let them play. But sometimes I wish players would let referees get on with their game too. Common phrases heard during games (and the answers I’d like to give) include:
· “Did you see that, Ref?” (No, I’m blind remember)
· “Where’s the advantage?” (There isn’t one because there was no foul)
· “We’ll have that, Ref?” (You’ll have to get fouled first)
· “What’s the difference between that and the foul earlier?” (This was a foul, that wasn’t)
It’s as if I shouldn’t make any decision without first establishing what everyone would like me to do. “Right lads. For an indirect free kick to blues, phone 0901…” The point of it is clearly to influence me, ironically meaning I can’t concentrate on the game and may make real mistakes rather than the alleged ones. It’s a shame such an attempt to influence the referee isn’t seen as cheating and stopped, but instead teams who have met supposedly to play football are simultaneously competing to see who can get the referee to make a mistake. Who says men can’t multi-task? The problem is best summed up by journalist Sean O’Meara:
“Both teams spend 90 minutes trying to trick the referee into making a mistake, then have the audacity to criticise him when he does.”
If it’s not cheating, it’s certainly ‘gamesmanship’ – a word made up by people who are ashamed of their cheating enough to change what they call it but not ashamed enough to stop doing it. Maybe there’s also a touch of repressed anger, built up over a week of being harassed at home.
Bizarrely, the same question can have more than one meaning. “How long, Ref?” can mean a player wants to know how much time there is to half- or full-time, but can also be a rhetorical question in complaint that the goalkeeper is holding on to the ball for too long. The goalkeeper of a winning team is likely to start holding on to the ball towards the end of the game, just as players start wanting to know how long is left. This doesn’t stop players complaining when my psychic skills have been found wanting and I answer a question they thought they didn’t ask.
The most annoying games, though, are those where the managers and other assorted people on the benches give me a constant stream of “Ref, Ref” for 90 minutes, shouted with such passion that I’d swear ‘Ref’ is Bulgarian for ‘Help! I’m drowning’. It seems they’d like me to sit facing them five yards into the pitch just in case the need should arise to abuse me. These monotonous shouts (probably more repressed cries for help due to harassment at home) are naturally ignored, which causes problems when a substitution is needed.
Imagine you’ve been shouting “Ref, Ref” at the referee and he’s ignored you – because he’s human and has been conditioned to ignore you – but after 70 minutes of this you actually need him to look at you because you have a substitution to make. It may cross your mind to change either of the “Ref”s to “Sub”. Instead the cry from these people is exactly the same. If Ivan Pavlov had done his experiments with salivating managers instead of salivating dogs, psychology would be very different today.
At last I look across after a player calmly points out to me that a substitution is ready to be made. His tone usually reveals that he’s harassed even more in training than he is at home.
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