Loans - Out

Rushall Olympic tiny little three sided ground ground.I Refereed a West Midlands Cup final there and sent off  Scottish International Kenny Burns who was well past his sell by date.

Quick question - is that how referees think about their careers?

No offence - I'm always amazed anyone wants to do it.  I tried it once and it gave me complete respect for anyone who is prepared to ref any game.

But, what I mean is when you look back at your careers or if you meet up with other referees is this the kind of thing that comes up in conversation? Re; Which famous footballers have you sent off/booked? What's the most ridiculous insult you ever received? An example of when you knew the rules that no one else in a 20K crowd seemed to? etc.

I'm just intrigued  about this sort of thing- cos you've dropped hints here and there about you refereeing and personally I think that's a really interesting perspective.  I mean how do referee square being fans of a club with the natural sympathy they must have for the officials.  What do you go through when you see Gasheads shouting abuse at the ref about a borderline decision? etc.

At my local club Eccleshall FC,they play in the North West Counties League attracting crowds of perhaps a hundred.Officials,good or not so good all get criticised.Last season when Rovers played at Nuneaton we had a superb referee.However,it isn't the norm to praise officials and it wasn't mentioned.I ran the line at Hillsborough once when I got a load of stick for flagging a player off-side with a defender on the goal-line.Keeper was outside the area and of course there have to be two defenders to play an attacker on-side with the goalie normally one of those two-but not on this occassion.
Having said all that the ref at Mansfield for our game this season was very weak- missed their captain who has since gone to Orient constantly fouling off the ball and wrongly sent Easter off-over ruled on appeal.One thing not noticed by most fans is how very fit to-days officials are.The annual fitness 'bleep' test at Lillishall followed by 12 sprints was a killer. Most of us will reflect on the officials in relation to how it affected our team but even with replays 'Expert pundits' on TV often disagree.