Referee

Me and a mate from another football forum made this up together , as he is a ref.

AT WHAT COST?

Refereeing is a lonely business.

Each match, we step onto the pitch with the whistle, and we are on our own. Yes, there are the assistant referees and the 4th officials and there is a measure of team camaraderie, but when push comes to shove and it’s time to make a decision, it’s up to you to act. It is here where your mettle is tested and we must do what we think is right, even when 11 players crowd around you saying the 93rd minute penalty you called that will probably break the tie has ruined the game and taken it out of the players hands. Then, after the match is over, we are left on our own to ponder the decisions we’ve made, and if you’ve made a mistake you add shame and despair to your loneliness. You might rethink the nasty things the players said to you, or you might relive the foul, and even when you’re right, you’re still alone. No one celebrates with the referee when he made a difficult and correct call and your family might not care either. In the end it’s just you and your crew, but eventually, when you go to sleep it’s just you.

If you feel enough passion and drive for this thing of ours, and you progress to the top levels, you will get offers to travel far and wide to go referee games. You can’t really say no when they tap you because there is always someone waiting to replace you when you say “no.” One step behind you, they wait. The other refs may be our friends, but far too often, in private, we hear the inner-circle criticisms, and each of us knows we are not immune. A referee once told me to ref each game at the top level like it’s your last, because if you mess up, the people that are next in line will be brought up and you may be sent to referee Heaven. These are just some of the fears and paranoias of a referee trying to make it in this world. None of this mentions the sacrifice that has to be made to reach the top rungs in this thing.

SACRIFICE
Every match for a referee is an “away game”. This is especially true when you travel out of your local area for a match. This requires a sacrifice of time, sometimes taking days off, lots of hours in cars and on airplanes for not-that-much money. Yet, the biggest sacrifice that I’ve heard of or personally experienced is time away from family. Over the summer I had to go to the West Coast twice for two events which kept me away from home for 4 and 5 days a piece. My girlfriend misses me when I am away and I always feel her sadness from the phone. I don’t like being away from her either, but this is the life I’ve chosen.

I think it’s worse for the guys who have kids. These men (and less frequently, women) have to leave home and their children several times each season. Spending time sitting on a plane is probably far less enjoyable or rewarding as playing ball with your kids or making love to your spouse. I have been told that there are some referees who made the conscious choice to not get married and have no family or kids because of their commitment to refereeing. Some guys “have a girl friend in every city.” Many have been divorced. The loneliness is not only the referee’s but it is also owned by his family, and that burden is not so easy to accept when you’re not the one with the whistle. For a group of people who work so hard to uphold the rules and fundamental fairness of the game, it’s that same dedication and desire that causes them to be so unfair to their family and home support structure. It hurts the referee and spouse/significant other. Considering that nearly all of the referees must have a primary profession to make ends meet which takes up 40 or more hours a week of their time, it seems the family only gets the leftovers during the season after soccer takes its chunk of time and attention. Leftovers are never as good as something freshly made.

We all make these sacrifices for the love of the game. Some people think sacrificing time with family for this is crazy, but then again, most people think being a referee is crazy and wouldn’t ever pick up a whistle. And they probably don’t understand, and unless they catch this refereeing “bug”, they probably never will.

For non-refs, the next time you think “these refs are terrible, they need to be trained better,” consider just how much time in training and gaining experience they DO spend on improving. To the refs who read this, the next time you go away for a long period to referee, do something nice for your spouse/girlfriend/etc.

I love this job but sometimes I take pause and wonder, at what cost?