Many faces of Refereeing

This is a bitter post, a disappointed post, to be honest a downright angry post.

I've just attended the District FA Council meeting where the usual items of business were completed. This included, at this stage of the season, the honour appointments for the District Cup Semi-Finals and Finals. The average marks for all of the referees who had received appointments this season were distributed and I was pleased to see that I had scored pretty highly over the games I had refereed.

Before the meeting I had spoken briefly to the Treasurer of the RA, who I represent on the Sunday League Committee and the District FA Council. He had been at the game on Saturday and I wanted some feedback on my performance. He had said he wasn't impressed by either my performance or that of the teams. It had been a scrappy game and I wanted to get some specific points but the meeting started so I never got the chance. That was disappointment #1.

I was however pleased to see that I was awarded 90/100 by the winning team but there was no mark for the losing team. This "no mark" thing was no real surprise as they had only given marks to one refereee in the three previous rounds of the competition. That had been a disappointing 65/100 despite their winning the game comfortably after the dismissal of an opponent and it had been given to me. The losing team on that occasion had scored me at 90/100.

So myself, another referee and the Secretary of the winning team from Saturday were asked to leave the room while the appointments were made for the Semi-Finals and Finals. While we were outside I spoke to the Steward/Owner of the club where the meeting was being held. He had managed the club until ill health had forced his retirement. He was also an ex-referee and we had a brief chat about the game. On my return I found that I hadn't been appointed to any of the six games as referee. I checked the appointments against the average marks and saw that apart from one other referee (a promotion candidate from level 7 to 6) I was the only referee in the top 13 never to have received a Semi-Final or Final appointment. I must have been close. That was disappointment #2.

I then looked more closely at the marks and realised that the team who had a history of not giving marks had in fact, by giving a low mark in Round 3, reduced my average mark from 86 to less than 83. If they had not scored me at all, I would have been 6 places higher on the average marks table. Disappointment #3 as I realised that this team's inability to score fairly because they perceived that I had not refereed them fairly some years ago, had probably cost me an honour appointment this season. That's when I started to get angry!

Then as I was leaving I caught part of a conversation between the aforementioned ex-referee and the auditor of the RA. It sounded like he was slagging off my performance on Saturday. Not only that he was laughing about the fact that he had told me to my face that he thought I had a good game. This is the many faced attitude that has made me furious!

So next week's Minor FA Cup game looks like it really will be my "Cup Final" for the season and after that, it's a case of just getting games in until the season finishes in three months. I feel like shit ...