Blowing the whistle

A very quiet day today. Woke up late, started marking mid terms. It's time consuming, but it has it's moments, the type of moments where you read through it and you realise that this is why I want to do this.

Then came what is more or less the highlight of the day. A mate from my old job asked if I could be a ref during a 7's match of football. The pitch was crap, and I mean really really crap, like the sort of pitch you would expect the local 12yo's to play at just for fun. It wasn't flat and it even had a rather large hole in it. One cone in each corner to draw the outline of the pitch and a street light post some 50-60 meters away was the spot we looked at to see where the halfway line was most likely to be, all in all, not a pitch you expect the World Cup final to be played at(although when countries like Greece wins the Euro, it just goes to show that ANYTHING can happen in football).

One might argue that having a rugbyplayer referee a football match might not be the smartest idea, but it all depends on what you want to see in a football match. If you want to see a match where there is no physical contact of any sort with a stop and go play, then I guess you're better off with a netball ref(Jesus Christ that game is fucking boring). However, if you want a game where shoulder to shoulder is accepted and divers like ronnie just gets a shake on the head from the ref who plays advantage whenever he can, I guess a rugbyplayer might be a good choice.

I'll admit that about 1/3 of the times I said the ball was either in or out of the pitch I had to guess, but come on, what can you do when there are no lines and no assistant referee and the teams decide to play cross balls? It kind of makes the job a bit more difficult. All credits to the players though; even if they sometimes were a bit frustrated they took every decision nicely, usually just by shaking their head or swearing low. They behaved nicely and no dangerous tackles were made(although one lad might have deserved a booking...)

So, what have I learned from this? I have no idea. I know that I might try to be a ref on a bit higher level(and hopefully with a better pitch), but that needs training. It also means that I need to start training a bit more. Now that will be a killer blow to my beerstomach(although I must admit that it has shrinked a bit lately. I have no idea why).

Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win
- Gary Lineker