Busy week

Sunday - instructing on a Basic Course for New Referees. Gavin and Umar on their first courses and me as Course Leader could have been a recipe for disaster but we worked through all of our sessions and finished within 30 seconds of our planned end of day - good job by all!

Monday - back to the County FA HQ for the inaugural RA/FA Development Evening. We had 4 good sessions ranging from James Doyle on Disability in Football, to Andy Madley on Offsides, Ken Haycock on Recognising Challenges and finishing with Bobby Madley talking about his career from refereeing on the Wakefield League to his current level refereeing on the Football League. He did his first Football League middle last Saturday at Bury vs Port Vale. All were very good and it was a late one by the time the post talk chatter had died away.

Tuesday - back out with my notepad and pen assessing another referee in the Northern Counties East League. This time it was a game in the President's Cup. The home team lost 3-1 despite going ahead in the 13th minute and the referee only issued one caution. I had a few points for all three officials and again it was another late night getting home.

One of the worst aspects of being an assessor is the mental gymnastics you go through after a game when you have delivered the de-brief but not yet written the report. You try to unwind but until the report is written and sent, you can't let the game go. It didn't help that I was feeling run down, a fact borne out by the appearance of not one, but three cold sores on my lip.

This left me unable/unwilling to go out training on Thursday having typed up the referee and assistant reports on Wednesday night. This came on top of the final (hopefully) resolution of a work issue, with a virus/worm disrupting the work at one of the sites I support for the last 4 months. In addition, my young son has not been well and exhibiting signs of anxiety, probably from being out of his usual routine and also my father in law suffering a detached retina last weekend. THIS HAS BEEN A TOUGH WEEK!!!

So it was a pleasure to go watch an experienced official today together with young Henry Naylor making his debut on the North East Counties. I took Fat Lad along as my guest. It was a challenging game with the home team running out 2-1 winners. To the amusement of all the players, a wayward shot managed to find me standing at the perimeter fence. I couldn't get out of the way without looking undignified, so I stuck out an elbow and watched the fierce shot ricochet off. The referee was in stitches and even went as far as congratulating the player who took the shot.

Fat Lad and I were helpless with laughter and it typified the day as we really enjoyed the game and the performance of the referee. Tomorrow sees me celebrate my 47th birthday and lead the 2nd half of the new referees course mentioned at the top of this post. I'm looking forward to it!