The FatRef

Happy Snappies

2019-11-20T15:58:00.001+00:00

And so photography plays a bigger part in my life now that I'm not refereeing. I'm still assessing promising refs but I'm not working any more so I can devote more time to an art that always struck me as fiendishly complicated. I have a Flickr site for all the photos I take but thought I'd also post a few on the old Fatref site to try and breathe a bit of life in it. The top 2 photos here are from a night-time shoot on the Thames in London, practising long-exposure photography. The bottom two are part of a secret book project I'm working on at the moment. All will be revealed in January!

Millwall's handball goal correct, but it'll be one of the last

2019-01-27T16:12:00.001+00:00

Michael Oliver’s decision to allow Millwall’s second goal in their FA Cup victory over Everton immediately provoked howls of derision across the board. The crossed free kick pinged around the penalty area before bouncing off the arm of Millwall’s No.5 Williams into the goal to equalise.

Despite Millwall protestations, the goal was good. Oliver was correct to let it stand – for now. Oliver ruled correctly that the handball was accidental. It simply bounced onto Williams' arm and into the goal. He really didn't know anything about it. So, no offence.

By the time next season starts later this year, the handball law will most probably have changed to disallow such goals.

This was the statement from IFAB, FIFA’s law-making body, last November.

“The ABM duly took note of football stakeholders’ expectations, so the most significant clarifications relate to ‘non-deliberate’ handball situations, where there is an unfair ‘outcome/benefit’ due to the ball making contact with a player’s hand/arm (e.g. a goal should not be allowed if the ball goes directly into the goal from a player’s hand/arm or if a player gains control/possession of the ball from contact with hand/arm and then scores or creates a goal-scoring opportunity).”

So this will reverse the decades old law that for a handball to be an offence it has to be deliberate. Until now a goal could be scored because of accidental handball. The law change should end that anomaly.

'Allo 'Allo 'Allo - There's no escaping the long arm of the law

2018-10-29T18:19:00.000+00:00

I pity the poor criminal who tries to make a run for it from this Detective Sergeant.
The referee was off duty on Saturday, but the fitness he undoubtedly needs in his job as a copper meant he had the game by the collar, using the positions he was able to get into to make decisions from a perfect spot 10-15 metres away for the whole match.

Referees looking to get themselves climbing the promotion ladder should have been watching this game (although admittedly an arctic blast chilled the bones of this Assessor on Saturday afternoon).

As a referee, I was, in my early years, seriously unfit and unqualified to referee at a serious level. Later, as I lost weight and worked on my fitness, a whole new game opened up for me, one which makes refereeing many times easier.
Assessing - or Observing - players over the last two seasons, I have been distressed to find myself, week after week, having to point out to aspiring refs that they are not getting into the right position to make credible decisions.
What I'm seeing are refs running from box to box in a straight line, a habit that means they are often either getting in the way of play and players or too far away when the ball is moved wide on the left or right towards the goal.
It's not really complicated for referees, but it does demand a basic degree off fitness and anticipation that turns a mediocre match official into a half-decent one.
Let's start by looking at goal kicks, both the place kick and the drop out. The referee's aim must be to get him or herself into the position where the ball is dropping and where attacker and defender are challenging. With a drop kick, this can be tricky and the referee needs to be fast off the mark, running hard for the first 30 yards and then turning to run backwards as the goalkeeper takes the kick. The ref should try their hardest to get as close to the drop zone, out near the touchline so that you are looking through the action to your assistant on the other side of the pitch.
The place kick gives the ref more time and if the game is of a decent standard the ball will be kicked the same distance each time, showing the ref exactly where he needs to be standing.
Equally, a variation on the old-fashioned diagonal is just as important as keeping up with play. The strict diagonal - corner of one penalty box to corner of the other penalty box - has fallen out of fashion, to be replaced with the more sophisticated styles that are only a little different. I find myself having to persuade junior referees to start off with a diagonal as week after week I see 90 minutes of running in a straight line through the centre circle, which gives a ref a very poor view of crucial incidents.
Getting yourself wide on the left or right gives the referee an excellent chance to follow attacking play as it moves towards the penalty area. This is the time when the most important decisions have to be taken - penalty shouts, disputed goals, fouls - and where your decision making will be closely scrutinised.
The referee who is running 15 yards or so behind the action, with no-one blocking his view, stands a much better chance of making the correct decision. But standing on the edge of the centre circle looking out to the left hand side of the pitch through a crowd of midfielders is going to have little credibility when the player with the ball suddenly goes to ground. Foul or simulation? Are you in the best position.
So this is why a basic standard of fitness is crucial to making good decisions. If you don't have this fitness, your decisions will come under close scrutiny and you'll find dissent levels rising. If the attacker who dived looks up to find you breathing down his neck, there won't be too many protests.
This is a basic level of refereeing that needs to be mastered early on. Once sorted out, you can start developing seriously.

"Excuse me Sir, how long till kick off?" This is not soccer!

2018-09-16T14:49:00.000+01:00

I was an hour early to observe the young ref in his local league game in East Kent. The four football pitches on the local park were still deserted, but 30 or 40 blokes were going through warm-up routines on their rugby pitch, along with the referee. As a former rugby player, I always enjoy watching a game and have always had masses of admiration for rugby refs, who officiate a hugely complex and physically violent sport.

But in fact the rugby referees feel sorry for their round ball counterparts, hemmed in as they are by weakly-enforced laws and an almost complete absence of respect from players.
When I heard one of the players addressing the referee as "Sir" and thanking him for the information, I couldn't help but contrast that behaviour with the average communication between player and ref. "Oy!" is about as friendly as it gets.
On the rugby pitch, the collisions were fearsome, players smashing into each other, tackling at high speed and dragging opponents to the ground. The players got up, shook themselves off and got on with the game.
My duties on the football pitch called me away, but the rugby players' behaviour was a revelation. This is how players behaved 30 years ago and the behaviour was still just as civil. Impressive.
The young ref trying to progress up the ladder was given a hostile reception as soon as he blew the whistle to start the game. Dissent flooded in thick and fast, both from on the pitch and from team officials and spectators on the touchline. The ref did his best, but there was almost no let up in the foul-mouthed language hurled at him for 90 minutes. He did his best, booking various players and calling the captains together to try to get them to enforce some discipline.
But the footballers were too preoccupied with winding each other up with unpleasant insults - just "Banter" honest! It left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.
The rugby match came to an end and both teams performed a corridor of players to applaud their rivals off the field - and the referee of course.

Between them, Geiger and VARS cocked it up in Moscow

2018-07-04T11:01:00.000+01:00

On the whole, Mark Geiger had a good match in very trying circumstances on Tuesday night in Moscow, where Colombia played a brand of "anti-football" that's not seen that often these days. Colombia, with several stars of international calibre in their side, resorted throughout the match to intimidation of the opposing English players and match officials alike.

So be it. That's no rare occurrence and Geiger, who must be ranked as a contender for a semi-final appointment if not the final (which I'm pretty sure will go to a certain German ref called Felix now that the champions are back home nursing their wounds), was handling the game well, clamping down on Colombian hystrionics with 4 yellows in a 12-minute period to try to bring the game back under control with a burst of severity.
The incident I want to discuss shows the structural weakness of the VARS and portrays just how, between two top referees, they can still manage to get the decision wrong.
The game was still goal-less towards the end of the first half when an England free kick near the edge of the Colombia penalty area erupted into chaos. With pushing and shoving going on everywhere, Geiger cannot be blamed for not seeing a specific incident involving Jordan Henderson and Colombia's Wilmar Barrios. Barrios, amidst the shoving, aimed the back of his head at Henderson's chest and then jerked his hear up towards Henderson's face, catching it a not very damaging glancing blow. Henderson, probably unnecessarily, hit the ground. Geiger hadn't seen the incident but the VARS decided to investigate.
This was a clear case of Violent Conduct and should have resulted in a red card.
And most people thought that, having spotted the incident, the VARS, a seasoned referee, would agree and let Geiger know what he needed to do. Or, he should at least have said something like this...
"Mark, there was violent activity in the wall there. You need to go and have a look at the pitchside monitor because you may need to give a red card." Geiger, who was in tune with the tempo and heat of the game, would most probably have seen it was a red, but between them, they didn't even bother taking another look.
So, yet another issue that joins the growing list of issues that need to be resolved when it comes to using VARS. And it again raises the question of whether it was wise to jump in to using VARS so quickly, when it's hardly been tried and tested.

Poland referee fails key test: "Don't influence the game's outcome."

2018-06-20T15:05:00.000+01:00

Nawaf Shukralla meant well, of course. The Bahraini referee in the middle for the biggest match of his career, wanted to get the injured player back on the pitch as quickly as possible to restore balance between Poland and Senegal.
Waving M'Baye Niang back onto the pitch, Shukralla made an error that nine times out of 10 would not even be noticed. This time, though, his trigger whistle combined with Polish incompetence to present Senegal with a goal that turned out to be the winner.

The ball was deep in the Senegal half - but heading towards the Polish half - when Shukralla waved his arms to allow Niang to re-enter the field of play. As Niang re-entered play, chaos erupted in the Polish defence and a wild hack saw the ball hoofed into the Polish half and left Niang closer to the goal than Poland's defence. He sprinted after the ball, got to it before Poland's goalkeeper, and scored to make the score 2-1 to Senegal.
The referee's mistake was in allowing Niang back on too soon. He heeded the screams and shouts of the Senegal bench - and probably his 4th official - to allow him back on quickly, while the action was in a neutral part of the pitch.
Referees are taught not to allow players back on either until the ball goes out of play or when play is in the player's own half.
Shukralla, in his defence, can argue that play was indeed in Senegal's half when he waved Niang back on. But he didn't anticipate what was going to happen, that play can break so quickly.
Also, he should have resisted pressure on him to allow Niang back on, until play enters a "safe" time when the referee's decision will not result in the threat of a goal - at either end of the field.
It's very sad when a well meaning error comes back and bites a ref. His intention was good, it's just that he jumped a little too quickly.
Another ref who's probably on his way home now.

Wrestling at corners - they're all at it

2018-06-19T13:21:00.001+01:00

It's hardly surprising that VARS can't cope with the anarchy of corner kicks.
British TV made a huge deal last night of two corners where Harrry Kane was clearly wrestled to the ground. But at the same time, English attackers and their Tunisian markers were indulged in all kinds of nefarious behaviour that makes it virtually impossible to make a clear ruling at a corner.
English pundits screamed for a penalty for their beloved England, but the sad truth is that there were probably three or four separate fouls happening at the same time.
The referee was probably watching the action itself, the drop zone where the challenge for the ball actually takes place. Meanwhile, around the rest of the penalty area, players were pushing, grabbing, holding each other in a perverse ballet that has gradually developed over the years into an anarchic situation that referees simply cannot deal with.
And last night we found out that several dozen TV cameras and expert Video Assistant Referees sitting in Moscow, far from the Volgograd action, were equally incapable of deciding whether a penalty should be awarded.
Presumably, the VARS in Moscow ruled there was not clear evidence for a penalty because there was just too much going on in the penalty area, too many players fouling each other. It would indeed appear that in one of the incidents, England's Stones pushed his Tunisian marker to make space for himself.
So what's the solution? It would appear that the only way to go is for teams to be advised that unfair decisions will be given, that the referee will punish the worst foul he sees, until the players learn to behave themselves.
Far from satisfactory it's true, but a lot more honest than the nonsense spouted by FIFA's refereeing bosses Massimo Busacca and Pierluigi Collina before the World Cup. With 25 cameras, Busacca said, "it will be quite impossible to miss fouls. "
"When it's clear there is an obvious mistake, the VAR intervenes," he said. Note use of the word "clear". Last night it may have been clear that Kane was fouled, but it was also clear that several other fouls were taking place at the same time, so which one to penalise?

Heart Attack brings a sudden end to refereeing career: Now it's mentoring time

2017-11-10T17:05:00.000+00:00

The season started so promisingly as well. A newly-promoted Level 5, I was looking forward to reffing at the top levels of the Kent County League and getting myself some good cup games to run. I had received my fixtures for September and ran the line in my first game in an academy Under 18s game between Millwall and Sheffield United.
But all my plans came to a juddering halt on a Thursday evening in the last week of August when, walking along Camden High Street in London after a day at work, I suddenly felt seriously poorly, breathless and lacking any strength. I walked very slowly to the tube station and stumbled onto a train for Kent at Charing Cross. A sign of my state of health was that I sent myself an email describing how poorly I felt. I was sure I had a virus, or even pneumonia.

With hindsight, I realise how stupid my actions were, but I made it to my car and drove home, where I told my wife I needed to get myself to hospital. At Tunbridge Wells hospital, triage showed its effectiveness and within five minutes I was being plugged in to an ECG machine. That's when things started getting serious. A young doctor said, "we think you're having a heart attack." Within a few minutes I was loaded onto an ambulance and was hammering down the M20 at 95 mph, chatting away happily to a paramedic.
To cut a long story short, I was wheeled straight into the operating room at William Harvey Hospital and fitted with a stent, a metal balloon, to one of my heart arteries that had closed up, and found myself in the acute care ward. My heart's inability to pump properly had allowed liquid to form around the organ and was pressing on my lungs, giving me a nasty feeling of drowning. This took a few hours of fading away - and a dose of morphine - before it eased up.
Over the following week I learned a lot about hearts. Most of all, I learned that I had over the past 10 years or so, had a major heart attack and not realised it. All well and good but my heart was damaged and with the addition of the new incident meant that my heart was unlikely to ever again regain its full strength.
So that's the story behind the end of my refereeing career after about 15 years.
But hang on a second. You don't actually have to run around the football pitch to be involved. In October, I turned out on Pembury playing fields to watch a young referee blow the whistle and to offer him encouraging words. Mentoring inexperienced referees is an invaluable tool just when a ref is at his or her most vulnerable. An encouraging word can mean the difference between giving up or carrying on.
Last Saturday I mentored a referee officiating in his first adult match, a much tougher proposition than children's games.
I'm hoping to enrol as an assessor, or Observer, in the New Year. Having been assessed plenty of times in the past couple of years, it'll be interesting to judge other referees.
I'm feeling fine, on the whole, enjoyed a 5km walk today and have gone back to work. A heart attack is a life changing experience, but it doesn't mean the end of everything, even if it has spelt the end of my time in the middle.

Going from bad to VARs in Russia

2017-06-24T19:47:00.003+01:00

Frankly, the VAR experiment (Video Assistant Referee) has been a bit of a disaster fior FIFA here at the Confederations Cup in Russia.
I'm writing these thoughts after the Germany-Cameroon game, where the referee didn't help matters by getting the wrong Cameroon player to show a red card to. I was in Saint Petersburg yesterday for the game between Portugal and New Zealand, a one-sided affair which Portugal won easily.

The problems with the VAR, which is supposed to be used at next year's World Cup, are already legion and were shown up here again today.

With 5 minutes to go until half time, a New Zealand defender tussled with Portugal's Andre Silva. Silva fell to the ground and the Kiwi tried to pick him up. As play moved away, Silva took deep offence at this and aimed 3 punches at Michael Boxall, making contact at least twice.
Boxall, coming from a country where they breed them tough, did not make a big deal of it and walked away, but it was a clear and obvious red card for Silva for violent conduct.

It's understandable that American referee Mark Geiger missed the incident, but I looked up, waiting for Geiger to listen to the voice in his ear piece telling him about the incident and that he should show a red card, exactly what the system has been introduced for.
But No, nothing.
I couldn't believe that no-one had seen it and the crime went unounished.

Meanwhile, in Kazan, apparently, a VAR awarded a penalty to Mexico, over-ruling the referee. The ref trotted over to his computer screen on the side of the pitch and then over-ruled the over-ruler, denying the penalty.
Really.
So far in the tournament, we've seen several indications the system has been introduced prematurely. Referees have been unsure when and how to use the VAR, only being told after games had started that they should signal with a television monitor signal that the VAR has been called in. Players have reacted aggressively to the confusion, something referees could do without.

There's no suggestion - until today - that mistakes have been made. Eventually, they are getting it right, but the game is not being made better so far.
FIFA needs to work hard with referees, and frankly I'm not sure all the wrinkles will have been ironed out by next June.

AP story and other Howard Webb quotes

2016-10-19T16:21:00.001+01:00

http://www.seattlepi.com/sports/article/Top-soccer-ref-Howard-Webb-reveals-how-he-endures-9983270.php

So here's my story from today's interview with Howard Webb that I did over the phone this morning. He was absolutely charming and wished me well with my Level 5. Couldn't be further from my last chat with a top English ref, Graham Poll, who couldn't resist taking the mickey out of my weight when I spoke to him at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Well Mr Poll, the joke's on you!! You showed three yellows and I'm still reffing!!

Below are some of the quotes from Webb that I didn't use in my AP story. Interesting thoughts on how you make decisions.

"It's really refreshing to hear that some refs suffer from a lack of confidence. You have peaks and troughs of confidence throughout your career. They last less long the more experienced you become.

"Sometimes you see the ball so clearly it's easy to make a decision but sometimes you're going with instinct.

"Some of the very best decisions come from your instinct not from what you see. If you only relied solely on what yousaw you'd miss too many decisions to be a top ref.

"Mark Clattemburg, in his first premier league game, in the first minute, liverpool-arsenal; he made a big decision to penalise Robin van Persie after he lobbed the outrushing Pepe Reyna for handling the ball. He felt something wasn't right

"Sometimes you have to go with a gut feeling. It's not guessing, it's following your experience and judgment.

"The best refs are those who are judged by their gut feeling being accurate

New generation of goalkeepers means times changing for refs' positioning

2016-09-12T18:57:00.000+01:00

The day when the referee could run upfield to the half way line in anticipation of a goalkeeper's clearance are coming to an end - and referees need to be aware of it and take action.

Elite referee Andre Marriner was caught napping by the new style of playing the ball out from the back on Sunday, and it cost Chelsea a goal and Marriner a good deal of respect.
With Chelsea defending, John Terry received the ball from goalkeeper Thibault Courtois on the left of his defence and passed the ball to Gary Cahill in the centre of the defence. Closed down quickly by Swansea's Leroy Fer, Cahill was a little sluggish passing the ball back to Courtois, but TV replays showed clearly that Fer crudely fouled the Chelsea defender, winning the ball and scoring.
Marriner, seeing Terry had the ball, anticipated that he would play it up through the midfield and had taken up a position on the halfway line.
Thirty yards away, the foul took place and Marriner was far too far away to spot it.
With the ball in the middle of the pitch, the action was outside the Assistant Referee's credibility zone and it's doubtful he had a good view of Fer's foul as Terry was blocking the way.
Marriner will bounce back. He's a good referee.
But referees at least need to be aware that the new generation of goalkeeper and defender are adapting to different roles. The goalkeeper is playing the role of defensive sweeper, allowing defenders to push up the field and squeeze the opposition.
That means that more action is taking place in the defence's penalty area, and there's a higher risk of challenges and clashes taking place in what was once upon a time a dead zone, where there was little action and which could be alrgely ignored by the referee as he ran to half way to take up positiion.
Well times have changed, and us refs have to change with them.

Criticism of refs shows ignorance of what a tough job it is at the highest levels

2016-09-05T15:30:00.001+01:00

Although we're in the same business, I don't know sports writer Martin Samuel. I've seen him in stadium press tribunes with the other Fleet Street royalty. But I'm just an anonymous news agency hack while these people are kings of their trade. I've enjoyed Samuel's writing over the years as well. I prefereed him at the Times, but that's just personal taste.

However I think he's got it badly wrong in his contribution to the debate on former referee Mark Halsey's surprise tweet last week, in which he said he had, before he retired, been pressured by the body that runs English refereeing into telling a lie about whether he had seen an incident that merited a red card.
As you all probably know by now, a player cannot be sanctioned if a referee at a top level says he witnessed the offence but decided it did not merit punishment. But if he says he did not see the incident, the player can be thumped with a ban by the Football Association.
Sergio Aguero had his collar felt for elbowing Winston Reid. Referee Andrew Marriner, just a few yards away and looking at the two players, told the FA he had not seen the elbow and would have sent Aguero off if he had seen the elbow.
This is where Samuel enters the picture. He finds it impossible to countenance that Marriner did not see the elbowing, preferring to accuse Marriner of lying.

"Andre Marriner had to claim to be unsighted on the day, when he was plainly just mistaken," wrote Samuel.

This is where Samuel needs to step out of the media tribune and go and stand on a pitch with a whistle in his mouth, watching 90 minutes of incidents. Referees make dozens or hundreds of decisions in a game. Some of them are wrong.
The real answer is frighteningly banal. Marriner was quite possibly looking at feet rather than heads, or he just blinked. Things happen in the blink of an eye. Believe me. I get it every Saturday or Sunday. "How could you not see that ref?" Well I blinked, or I was looking 3 yards in a different decision, I was still looking at a player's aggressive reaction to a challenge and hadn't followed the ball. All these things could quite easily mean that Marriner did not see the incident with Aguero.
Strikes me that leaping from the incident to accusing Marriner of lying is intellectually shoddy, and shows a lack of real understanding of how the action unfolds in a game.
As for Halsey, he has also disappoitned me. I always liked him as a referee, but he seems to have - along with former head referee Keith Hackett - donned the mantle of crusader against widespread corruption or incompetence in the ranks of their former colleagues.
There is an element of biting the hand that fed you from Halsey.
Critics, most of them of the armchair variety, appear to enjoy leaping on the big paradox of football. that it is refereed by people who make mistakes. And those mistakes are inevitable unless a radical change in the way the sport is refereed is introduced. Technology may answer some of the questions, but it doesn't answer all of them. And that's why there'll always be a man (or woman) in the middle who'll always be an easy target for the scribblers and complainers because it's impossible to be right all the time.

Back to the nitty gritty of The Cow Shed and Maidstone Civil Service CLub

2016-09-02T18:25:00.001+01:00

OK that's enough of the fancy pants Kent County League Premier Division games, it's back to the nitty gritty of amateur football this weekend, with one game on a ground once dubbed The Cow Shed and another on Sunday morning around the back of Maidstone's Civil Service Club. Before you ask, I have no idea what elements of the Civil Service are based in Maidstone, but I'm sure someone out there in Blog Land could enlighten me.

I'll probably have to change course 180 degrees but it's always been a pleasure reffing in West Farleigh, one of the nicest clubs I've ever encountered. The village is on the slops of the Medway Valley just a couple of miles from my home so it's always easy to get to. (especially tomorrow, when most of Kent's motorway netwrok appears to be closing down after a lorry demolished a footbridge a week ago.)
The team and its officials are always friendly and swearing is frowned upon. Tomorrow's game is against a new team for me, Ashford Reserves. Their first team used to play in the Ryman league and the reserves have only recently joined my league.
The West Farleigh pitch is fine these days, although it slopes down pretty sharply towards the river. It was once upon a time considerably more rural and I remember about 10 years ago one of my reffing colleagues called a game off before it even started because the pitch was unfit - apparently wildlife had been left to graze on the pitch, meaning it was covered in unsavoury substances by the time Saturday came around.
These days they've built a pleasant changing room, although the pitch is at least 100 yards away, across a couple of 5-barred gates.
Aaah, the pleasures of reffing in the countryside!
Then on Sunday it's my first game of the season in the Maidstone & Mid Kent Sunday League, where no prisoners are taken.

I'll report back next week!

The big season for the not so-Fat Ref

2016-08-30T18:41:00.000+01:00

It was only when I was clearing up some old papers the other day that I came across the document announcing I had passed my test to become a referee – dated February 2002. I’ve been a ref for 14 years!
And finally, after all those years, I’ve got my act together enough to be reasonably close to getting myself to being promoted to Level 5.

This season will be crucial to those chances. I’ve already started on the scheme, which is tough by anyone’s standards. I’ve already passed a written test on the laws of football and attended various events to show my commitment to football in Kent. Most importantly however, I’ve already had two of the four – or even 5 – assessments I will have before I have a chance of being promoted. One of the assessments was satisfactory and the other said I was above the required standard. Over the next two or three months I’ll be assessed a couple of times more to see if I’m up to it.

One by-product of being on the assessment programme is that referees are given more senior games to run, to test their abilities at a higher level. So it was on Saturday that I got to referee my first match in the premier division of the my local county league. For years I’ve run the line in these games, but this was my first experience of actually having assistants helping me. I suppose it’s to be expected, but having qualifies linesmen – as opposed to a substitute or manager carrying the flag – was a huge help as they could more or less take command of larg chunks of the pitch.
For example, I was stranded once when the ball was booted upfield. Sprinting as hard as I could, I was still 40 yards away from the action when the attacker screamed for a penalty. Happily, I had an assistant standing 15 yards from the action who quickly indicated there had not been a foul and we could carry on. What a luxury for me.
Losing a large amount of weight over the past year has been the key factor in becoming a better referee – and a healthier human – and I feel a lot lighter on my feet while reffing. I struggled over the summer, putting on a lot of weight while in Paris for 5 weeks working at the European Championships. But in the past month – helped by the dull food options in Brazil – I’ve lost a lot of that gained weight and am now almost back to my level at the end of the season, about 108 kgs. As you can tell, this is still too much and I’m aiming to get to 100 kilos (under 16 stone) by Christmas.
But whatever happened, I’m pretty sure Level 5 – if I make it – is as high as I’ll go. Level 4 is the level at which you have to make a major commitment to refereeing, working on what are called Supply Leagues (to the Football League) in semi-professional football. In many ways, I’m confident I could referee at that level, but it would be extremely hard to commit myself to travelling all over southern England for evening games, leaving work in mid-afternoon and not getting home until the early hours of the morning. But most of all, I think my advanced years will disqualify me from running 2.6 kilometers in 12 minutes, the minimum standard demanded for the higher levels of football. I think I could lose another 50 kilos and not be able to run that fast. That’s roughly 6 laps of an athletics track in 12 minutes, 2 minutes per lap. A fit youngster can do this relatively easiy, but I’m in my 50s. Ah well.
So my target, this season or next, is Level 5. That’ll give me lots of interesting games and challenges to keep me busy on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Assessments - Pray for a boring match!

2016-04-12T17:52:00.003+01:00

You'd think I'd know better than to try and get myself promoted to a higher band of refereeing at my age. But No, as part of my efforts to get fit after losing about six and a half stone - so far - I've applied to be promoted to the FA's Level 5 of referees, known as Senior County Referees.

It's a grand-sounding title but would only make a modest difference to the games I ref. But it would mean a better standard of football, which is always good. In case you don't know, there are 9 levels of referees. I started off on Level 9 more than 10 years ago and have worked my way up to Level 6 at the moment.
As well as a written test, I'll have three or four assessments, in which an experienced referee runs the rule over your performance during a game.
My first assessment was a couple of weeks ago. I was initially surprised that the game chosen looked a bit weak and wouldn't present much of a challenge on a sunny Sunday morning in Kent. I couldn't have been more wrong!
Assessors used to be mythical creatures, hiding behind trees to take their notes so that the referee didn't know he was being watched. These days, it's a lot more humane and I had a chat before the game with the friendly and helpful assessor, who has officiated in the Football Conference in the past.
It's wonderful to have a neutral voice watching you referee. You have to be a pretty confident character to referee and to be told week after week that you've got it all wrong and that you haven't got a clue what's going on.
The game turned out to be quite dramatic, with most of the challenges the game can throw at a ref, including a red card, a penalty, an assault on a substitute and a few yellows for various offences - Oh yes and a pitch that was more cratered than the lunar surface, making it almost impossible to give any handball decisions.
The assessment came in the (electronic) post a few days later. Generally fine, it agreed with most of my decisions, complimented me on my treatment of the red card and other offences and told me I'd got all 23 fouls right.
On the other hand, the assessor pointed out that even though I've lost a lot of weight, I'm still not fit enough to be close enough to play all the time and I was - quite fairly - marked down for that.
It's a hugely valuable document that I've read many times to glean all the information I can on my refererring and how to improve it.
I probably won't have another one until next season now, so I have three or four months to really get the last couple of stone off and some running work under my belt over the summer.

Man United's free kick trick divides critics, exposes complexity of offside calls

2016-02-23T16:28:00.000+00:00

Juan Mata's second goal for Manchester United in the FA Cup match with Shrewsbury last night has divided referees and football fans - but most of all it's a severe test of the offside laws that were tweaked at the start of this season.
The offside law, Law 11of the Laws of the Game, were tweaked this season to read that players in an offside position must be "mak[ing] an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball" in order to be penalised.

Last night, with Mata lining up a free kick from about 25 yards, three Man Utd players stood in an offside position between the defensive wall and the Shewsbury goalkeeper.
As Mata began his run-up, the three United players sprinted out, away from the goalkeeper. It's not clear whether one of the three was still in an offside position when the ball was kicked, but at least one appeared to be offside, although it was tight.
So, should referee Bobby Madley have disallowed the goal when Mata shot the ball over the wall and to the goalkeeper's left and into the net?
It turns out United had approached Madley before the game and asked his advice on a similar trick used by their Europa League opponents MidtJylland of Denmark a couple of weeks ago. And Madley took an unusual position for such a free kick, standing directly behind Mata to follow the flight of the ball.
Because as it turned out, the ball did not pass very close to the three United players, instead flying over the defensive wall and into the net.
That meant that the three players may have been in an offside position, but could not be penalised because their actions did not "clearly impact" the goalkeeper's attempt to save the ball.
He wouldn't have saved it even if the United players hadn't been there.
I wonder if Madley would have allowed the goal if he hadn't known it was coming?

Pens/No Pens - we never get them right!

2015-12-08T18:35:00.002+00:00

In two games this weekend, I awarded two penalties, turned down a couple of easy ones but also worried that I should have given another in each game. On Sunday, I gave 2 to the same team in less than 5 minutes, allowing them to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead that became the final score.

In my other game, on Saturday, the score was 2-1 to the home team in the 94th minute when an away team attacker tried to dribble his way through 3 or 4 defenders and ended up on the floor. The home team had given me grief throughout the game and I'd have liked nothing more than to see the unfancied visitors equalise, but I couldn't give a penalty because I simply did not see a foul. It was impossible!
I was 10 yards away staring at 10 legs and a ball in a flurry of motion. Impossible to tell I'm afraid.
My broader point here is that penalties are often really hard to give.
On Sunday, the away team's long-legged striker skipped around one challenge in the area that I saw as a possible foul, but the player continued and I decided to play advantage and let him have a shot. Almost immediately another challenge flew in that saw the attacker stumble and hit the ground, even though no contact was made.
I blew for the penalty and explained that the law states, "trip or attempts to trip." The defender does not actually have to make contact. The penalty was scored and 2 minutes later the defender who had protested the loudest clumsily tripped the same attacker. I pointed to the spot again and the goalkeeper said, "at least that one was a foul."
Within 5 minutes the away team, now 2-1 down, burst into the penalty area. The attacker got his cross away and was brought down by a defender's attempted tackle. I didn't blow - frankly I was also in a poor position and didn't have a great view - and after the game the manager argued it should have been a penalty.
I made the point that the attacker got the ball away and 2 players went tumbling to the ground, not enough reason for me to give the penalty.
The day before, on a lovely pitch in south London, I had refused the last minute penalty.
These decisions are tough. This season I've benefitted from being much more mobile to get closer to the play and make better decisions. But still, these split second decisions also benefit from a certain amount of calculated guesswork.
I'm often grateful there are no video replays at my humble level in the Kent County League and Maidstone Sunday League. I'm not sure how well I'd stand up to the scrutiny.

Maidstone v Dartford - Dartford equalise. Should the goal have stood.

2015-11-16T18:57:00.001+00:00

http://www.maidstoneunited.co.uk/2015/11/stones-tv-dartford-highlights/

The incident takes place in the 82nd minute. Dartford in white and Maidstone in Amber. Dartford player shoots from edge of area, attacker in an offside position ducks to allow ball into goal. GK approx 3 yards to left of offside player dives but cannot reach the ball.
His direct line of vision is not influenced by the offside striker, unless he sees him out of the corner of his eye.
I'm tempted to agree with the referee here, but I'm not sure why.
Assistant flags for offside but is over-ruled by ref.

That said, I've looked at the Premier League's advice to referees now and it would appear to indicate that the act of ducking to get out of the way of the ball is enough to count as interference.

I've posted it on a refereeing website where the consensus so far is that it's a marginal decision and it would probably have been best NOT to over-rule your assistant.

Still, looked like Dartford had some excellent chances anyway.
.

"I know, I'm a Ref" - Those dreaded words from a player

2015-09-17T15:50:00.001+01:00

I get this 9 or 10 times a season from a player who is patently NOT a referee, but probably stood on the centre spot once for his son's Under 9s game. The latest was from a goalkeeper who took exception when I warned him about taking too long to fly kick the ball.
His logic was confused when he approached me at half time to explain the Laws of the Game.
There may be a 6 second rule, but it only counts from when I start preparing to take the kick, he explained.
I sighed inwardly, biting my tongue.
"Tell you what keeper," I said. "Humour me. Make it 6 seconds from when you pick the ball up to when you kick it. Just to make me happy."
"OK ref," he said cheerily and wandered off for his half-time smoke.
Over the last few years I've met several goalkeepers who have informed that the six second law no longer applies.
Now, it appears, goalies think they can basically take as long as they like to re-start play.
Players do get annoyed when their team is losing and they see a goalie ambling slowly back to get the ball.
A ref can't really stop his watch every time the 'keeper takes 15 seconds longer then he should to get the ball, but he should really only get one warning that he's taking too long to take drop outs. Then it's an indirect free kick in a dangerous position, for which his team will not thank him.
One tip - give the goalie his warning from a long way away so that everyone knows he's on a warning.

It was lino at other end of the pitch who disallowed Palace goal for offside

2015-09-11T15:57:00.000+01:00

It's very rare indeed that the assistant referee at the far end of the pitch from the action gets closely involved in play. But I've just found out that's exactly what happened in the Premier League game between Crystal Palace and Aston Villa last month, when Palace had a goal eventually disallowed for offside.

It was a very difficult decision to make. A shot cum cross from a Palace player from the edge of the area went into the goal, and at first referee Keith Stroud signalled a goal, seeing nothing wrong.
Stroud saw the ball go into the net, apparently directly, through a crowd of players. No problem there. The Assistant Referee spotted a Palace player in an offside position, but the ball went straight past him and into the goal, it appeared. The player had his back to the Assistant.
It was the linesman who was about 40 yards away on the halfway line who just happened to have a perfect view of the flight of the ball and spotted what happened.
The shot was going wide by a couple of yards but struck the Palace striker who was in an offside position on the chest, diverting the ball into the goal. Impossible for the referee and one assistant to see, but it was the third official who spotted it.
The crucial aid here for the refereeing team was their comms system, which enabled the referee to ask the assistants if there was any problem with the goal.
Stroud probably heard one assistant say that he didn't see any problem, but was then probably very surprised indeed to hear the assistant at the other end of the pitch pipe up and say, "Lads, I spotted it. It's offside. No goal!"
It won't have been an easy decision for Stroud to sell to the Palace players after initially allowing the goal, but what's important is that they got it right.
Even though the assistant had little credibility in terms of distance, he just happened to have the view of the incident that neither of his two colleagues had.
And if an official knows that a decision is incorrect in law, he must not allow play to restart.

Nothing like the real thing to raise the blood pressure

2015-09-10T18:16:00.004+01:00

Friendlies are all well and good but it was obvious that real competition had started up again - especially from the 9 yellow cards I dished out over 2 games on Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday I reffed a cracking 3-3 draw between Div One teams. It was a hard game but exciting and I enjoyed being up with play much more often, having shed almost 30 kilos (fouir and a half stone).

It saddened me when, as an away team player shook my hand at the end of the game, one of his teammates shouted: "you're not going to shake his hand are you".
The away team had been 3-1 up and conceded a penalty when one of their players tripped an opponent a yard inside the area. Then the equaliser for the home team came when an attacker broke through and was brought down by the goalkeeper. He quickly got to his feet and tapped the ball into the empty net. I was pleased that I'd played the advantage and held back on the whistle, but I came in for some stick from the away team. "What do you want? A penalty and a red card?" I asked.
I had reffed these two same teams at the fag end of last season when there was nothing to play for. It was a cinch, with no pressure.
But it was clear from the outset that the two teams both wanted to win. That was reflected in the football but also in the behaviour of the players, which was not too good. I carded several and used all the tricks in the book to get players to calm down, including calling both captains over for a warning chat - something I only do very rarely - but not much helped.
Most of the dissent came from midfielders who were clearly trying to influence me and who were battling for domination of the middle of the 3G pitch.
I did find there was very little dissent against individual decisions in and around the penalty area, mainly because I was up with play for a change.
Ground covered - 7.7 kilometres
So Sunday morning saw me somewhat stiff-legged in the countryside around Maidstone for my introduction to the Maidstone and Mid-Kent Sunday League.
The standard was clearly below what I had reffed on Saturday and the game was one-sided. One very obvious difference between the Saturday and Sunday leagues was that the Sunday league players were up for a fight if they felt wronged.
The game was all quiet until about the 70th minute, when the temperature suddenly rose quickly and I found myself pulling players apart. It was mostly handbags, however, and no real harm was done, so I kept the red card in my pocket.
The legs held out - just - and I'm looking forward to this weekend's two games, even if doing two matches means a couple of hours work on the laptop filling in disciplinary forms and match reports.
Ground covered - 7.5 kilometres

Never been so well prepared for a season

2015-09-04T18:06:00.001+01:00

On Saturday I'll be reffing my first elague game of the season. Coincidentally the game is exactly the same feature as I ended last season with, in Division One of the Kent County League.
But in many ways, things could not be more different.

In May, I was four and a half stone heavier than I am now. I'm still no beanpole and have another 3 stone or so to lose, but I've undergone something of a transformation since the spring, when I finally realised - encouraged by a doctor's pronouncement that I was now a Type 2 Diabetic - that I needed to do something serious about my lifestyle and health.
The weight loss has been gradual but steady and I've also bought a "FitBit" that has made me somewhat obsessive about the amount I walk during the day. Getting in the 10,000 steps daily has become something of a personal challenge.
It means that instead of walking from my office in north London to Camden Town tube station half a mile away, I walk a couple of miles and a few stations further along the Northern Line to Warren Street before jumping on the Tube.
I'm working hard to replace fat with muscle. I've spent quite a lot of time at the gym this summer and I'll be reffing twice a weekend from now on, something I haven't done for several years.
I've also got a few friendlies in as well as a line for the opening game of the Premier Division a couple of weeks ago, which has helped me to get my eye in and remind me of the importance of keeping concentration levels up throughout the game.
The FitBit tells me I'm covering about 8 kilometres (5 miles) during a game.
I've noticed that at my new weight, I'm considerably faster around the pitch and it's clearly improved my decision-making and credibility on the pitch. It can be depressing to have players telling you you're not keeping up with play, even if they're just trying to get one over on you, but I'm hoping they won't have that excuse this season.
The diet has worked well so far, well enough in fact for the doctor to tell me I no longer have diabetic readings. I'm hoping to be 15 stone by Christmas, still no lightweight but a long way from the ridiculous weight I managed to climb to by the time I kicked off the diet on April 15.

You Are The Lino - Test your ability to spot offside

2015-09-01T15:59:00.003+01:00

http://www.dutchreferee.com/offside-exercises-for-assistant-referees/

Test your ability to spot the correct offside decision.

One tip: It's a bloody sight harder than it looks!

Offside problems are not going to go away and changes just make it harder

2015-08-28T18:33:00.003+01:00

Running the line was hard enough already without a tweak to the law that has, in my opinion and based on my experience in the first game of the season, made it virtually impossible to implement the laws correctly and consistently.

We've seen several issues surrounding offside at the elite level of the game already this season - not just issues affected by the adjustments made recently.
The changes - to summarise - mean broadly that a player in an offside position who tries to play the ball when it is near him should now be penalised.
Easier said than done:
On Saturday, in the baking heat of a Kent County League fixture, problems emerged immediately. It's safe to say that every player, spectator and team official had a different view of what was and what was not offside.
I only had to flag once when I saw a player trying - and failing - to play the ball when offside. That was relatively problem-free.
The problem is actually doing the traditional lining job. I'm sure I made a couple of mistakes, especially one when I flagged an offside incident that took place about 45 yards away and I was looking through a crowd of players.
The demands made on officials were highlighted in Arsenal's game against Liverpool on Monday when Aaron Ramsey was flagged for offside.
We come back to the same old issue of technology. But I think technology failed us here. Multiple replays showed Ramsey was more or less in line with the second last defender, but there were also views that appeared to show Ramsey's leg was in an offside position. In this case, he should be penalised.
The linesman had to make the finest of judgtements, and there is a measure of guesswork because he has to look at the player making the pass - about 40 yards away - and then quickly turn his head to see the positiion of the player receiving the ball. In this split second was Ramsey just goalside of the defender? Possibly.
Essentially here, 100% accuracy is impossible and it boils down to deciding what kind of football we want. The changes have made it virtually impossible to get the decisions right.
Nothing will change in the hundreds of amateur leagues. They can't afford technology so you're stuck with us linos making the decisions.
Ramsey said rugby had got it right with etchnology deciding some key decisions. But it can almost be guaranteed that football matches would last between 30 and 60 minutes longer and every decision would be contested by players who will do anything to influence the game honestly or dishonestly.
I'm sorry to say it but rugby is a more honest sport than football.
I believe the answer is to leave the game alone and live with the errors that have been with us for decades. Limited use of technology to give instant decisions - as in goal-line technology - is a good thing, but let's not allow the broadcasters to get their way and turn football into an American Football-style marathon in which the game is stopped to allow advertisers in to sell their wares in a commercial decision dressed up as an attempt to make the game more honest and games last for hours.
That's not entertainment.

No excuses for Bournemouth officals - but they won't be looking for them

2015-08-18T15:24:00.000+01:00

In footballing debate, it's fashionable - and often de rigueur - to lurch to one end of the argument or the other just to make oneself heard over the hubbub of noise surrounding the issues.
But when it comes to discussion of last night's cock-up by the refereeing team at Anfield, the best reaction is probably - unless you're a resident of a certain south coast resort - to shrug your shoulders, make sure lessons are learnt form mistakes and move on.
I can make several serious excuses for the officials in last night's game, but the bottom line is that a mistake by one Assistant Referee was compounded by referee Craig Pawson also failing to spot that Moutinho should have been penalised for offside and Christian Benteke's goal disallowed.
It was the only goal of the game and Bournemouth left Liverpool with no points instead of a distinctly encouraging point.

It's almost certain that only a handful of very alert spectators at last night's game would have spotted that the goal should have been disallowed. But that's not a serious excuse. The Assistant Referee is trained to spot these breaches of the law.
In fact Moutinho was strolling slowly back from an offside position after a previous attack and was a couple of yards offside when the ball was crossed. He tried to tap the ball in but failed, and Benteke tapped home for the winner.
The average spectator may not have had the trained eye to spot the error, but on television, the replays hammered home the mistakes.
TWEAKED LAW
Last season, the goal would have stood. This season, however, the offside Law has been tweaked to prevent goalkeepers and defenders being unfairly penalised. If a player makes an obvious move for the ball when he in an offside position - even if he doesn't make contact with the ball - he has to be penalised.
All match officials and teams have been briefed about this change, and there's really no excuse for the lapse last night.
The only positive to come out of the sorry affair is that a spotlight has been shone on the issue and officials like myself will be keeping a close eye out this when their seasons open this Saturday.
In fact I had a similar issue in my first game of the season on Saturday, a very pleasant run-out in the delightful setting of the Medway Valley in Kent.
A LONG WAY FROM ANFIELD
0-0 for 88 minutes, the away team won the match when the ball was pumped forward towards a striker who was clearly - by about 10 yards - in an offside position. It all happened in a flash but I recall the offside striker did not move for the ball and a midfielder surprised the defenders by sprinting onto the ball and scoring.
After the game, the losing team's manager quizzed me about the incident - in the firendliest of ways. He felt the offside striker had made a move for the ball and should have been given offside. I disagreed, saying I felt he was never that close to the ball and didn't try to challenge for it.
I'm sure the atmosphere would have been a lot less cordial if it had been a league game, but I'm pretty sure I would have given the same decision - unless there were video replay cameras concealed in the sheep pens surrounding the pitch to prove me wrong!