Much better

Having eased myself through last week's emergency outing in a Sunday League game and a planned junior game in the afternoon, I stepped out this morning with a little more confidence about my return to match fitness. The unexpected calf injury 6 weeks ago spoilt my early season run outs but today I felt stronger and as a result put in two decent performances.

The first was a bottom division Sunday League game between two teams new to the league. The home team's Secretary used to regularly feature in the County FA's disciplinary list and the away team started their season with having two players sent off in the first round of games of the new season. Despite the warm weather, tempers did not become frayed, players competed fairly and I managed to get around the field pretty well. I found myself keeping close to play or at least in line with it as the game progressed. It was a high scoring affair with the away team squeezing out a 6-4 victory. One caution, lots of handshakes and a smattering of suntan from the bright sunshine throughout the game.

The second was a bottom division (in their age group) junior league game between two teams in the closest city to home. The game was taking place across the park from where I spent my early 20's turning out for the local rugby league team before injury curtailed my career. The coaches were very cordial, the players competitive but fair and the supporters well behaved apart from one or two comments about offside decisions. I set myself a target for the second half of this game to run further and work harder than I had in the first half. I managed it but not by much (around 200m and 25 calories). I still achieved it and with no game next week because of work commitments, I can rest up now until training on Wednesday week. My next games are both on County Cup duty in Huddersfield in 2 weeks - can't wait!

I do have to report that despite doing a full warmdown after each game, I have just had a major attack of cramp in my left hamstring - ouch! I'm ok though, dancing around the conservatory cursing seems as effective at clearing cramp as it did 5 years ago when I used to suffer from it a lot!!!

How many hats do you wear?

Having completed my reports for this afternoon's game and I sat back in the glow of my slightly reduced sunburn (thanks to you Nivea Factor 30) and considered just how much I'd gotten through in the last 7 days.

Sunday saw me open my 10th season on my local Sunday League. Monday I attended the Respect meeting for referees on a local Junior Football League. Also at the meeting was one of the County's RDOs and he not only talked about the progress made by the league in terms of Respect, but also dangled the tantalising carrot of a new Referee Academy based at one of the County's 3 professional clubs.

It's a similar programme/setup to the one which used to operate at another of the County's professional clubs but was discontinued a couple of years ago. The academy provides a safe environment for the development of players and referees and I wish them every success.

Tuesday I attended a Supply League Assessor's training game. The forms used to report Referee performance are changing for the next marking season and this was an opportunity to practice. There was plenty to note down and the report took a little time to put together.

Wednesday saw me pop on my Sunday League committee head as I needed to complete the registration of the 1,100 or so players who are available to play in our 44 team league. The next two nights saw me sitting up to the wee small hours recording all of the starting line-ups, substitutes (used and unused) and goal scorers for the 31 games which had taken place in the previous 4 days.

On Saturday, I completed the report from Tuesday before heading out to my game at the same venue, but with a different referee. Notes were taken, feedback provided and I headed home for an early night. The early night was necessary as my wife recently purchased her first horse (a life long ambition) and has been up and out at half five every day this week to muck it out and settle it down.

This brings us around to today when I managed to squeeze in a promotion assessment for a referee who is returning to Open Age football after a break managing a local junior football league. The game didn't go to plan, but he did quite well in the circumstances. I finished my week refereeing my first junior football game for a long, long time.

The game passed without major incident and as mentioned above, the sunburn isn't too bad. The only thing is that I've had two spasms of cramp in my left hamstring which hasn't been exactly pleasant ... and that's after a full warm down after today's game!

The week will consist of a few more match reports, the writing up of the assessments from yesterday and today, as well as a trip to South Yorkshire for another Supply League assessment. It WILL be quieter soon but still it will be another week of many hats.

Finished until September

When I arrived this morning at the backword game I had been given on Friday, I saw the nets weren't up and the home team, who are usually changed and warming up sometimes as early as 45 minutes before kick off, were standing about in the car park, still in their "day" clothes. When their manager gave me a "cutting the grass" signal, I didn't think he was suggesting anything about my gardening prowess and it was with dismay that I found out my season was finishing, as it had started back in January at the same ground, with a postponement.

I decide not to insist they collected up all their subs and paid me in 10p pieces, but reported the facts to the League Secretary when I got home. Well the truth is that I got halfway through the report when the phone rang. It was one of the senior players for another Premier Division team reporting that their referee hadn't turned up - where is the commitment of these match officials? - could I help?

I jumped back in the car and made my way to their ground and found their opponents were the team who had phoned on Tuesday night when their referee hadn't turned up! We kicked off in bright sunshine with blue skies overhead and the temperature around 23C and I had no sunscreen on my freshly shaved head.

The game went well with only a couple of disputed decisions, but we did have a player suffer an injury to his ankle. He tried to turn and move into space on 19 minutes to receive a pass from a team mate but his ankle cracked and he worried he had broken it. The away team manager was the first on the scene when I summoned help and he spent quite some time tending to the player once he had been removed from the field before the player gingerly moved around to what passed for his team's technical area (not marked out for Sunday League football).

The game finished 5-3 to the away team which allowed them to leapfrog the home team and move into 3rd place. Everyone went home friends and I went home fried! The afternoon was supposed to have been spent watching the League Two Play Off Final, but instead I ran around buying up supplies for my first outdoor cooking session of the close season. Needless to say I'm unlikely to start my pre-season training tomorrow as planned and it seems Wednesday will see me take an easy jog to break myself in gently.

So whatever you are getting up to in the close season and I know WRCFA School of Excellence has two trips planned (Lisboa Cup, Portugal and the Aarhus Cup, Denmark?), I hope your training goes well, those of you who have fitness tests pass them without any problems and we'll do it all again from August onwards.

See my cooking skills in action ...