WHOEVER it was who first declared “you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” had a point.
Having run a few miles in the boots of Scotland’s referees, a more derided, maligned and persecuted bunch you are unlikely to encounter, last week my admiration for and empathy with our match officials has suddenly sky rocketed.
At a time when both the competence and impartiality of our match officials are being increasingly called in to question by irate fans and even, alas, by managers and clubs, it proved to be an enlightening experience.
Not being a supporter of Aberdeen, Celtic, Hearts, Hibernian or Rangers, I have never subscribed to the widely-held view that referees in this country are biased against a particular team due to their background or leanings
As the late, great Tom “Tiny” Wharton, the iconic Scottish whistler of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, once told me over a cup of tea and a chinwag in his Newton Mearns home “your religion changes every time you run up the park in an Old Firm game”.
Yet, I have certainly been highly critical about the handling of big games and scathing about he award of critical decisions in print in the past. In future, though, I will not be quite so hasty to pass judgement.
My first – and hopefully last – experience of refereeing a match came when I went to watch my eldest son play for his school team. As the game was about to kick-off it emerged no whistler had turned up. So I got tapped on the shoulder by one of the coaches and asked to step in to the breach.
Now, it was hardly the second leg of the Copa Liberatadores final between Boca Juniors and River Plate in the Bernabeu. It was a seven-a-side game between a bunch a 10 and 11-year-old boys on one third of an artificial pitch in the suburbs of Glasgow. Nevertheless, it gave an eye-opening insight into the lot of the man-in-black.
Who knew, for example, that determining which player touched the ball last in a 50/50 challenge and which team should subsequently be awarded a throw-in could be difficult? Having a linesman would have helped. But it was startling how something so seemingly straightforward could be so challenging.
The reaction to many of my calls – indignation, outrage, tears, recrimination, disbelief – was also unexpected.
Anyone who says that kids aren’t influenced by how high-profile professional players behave on television is, as Steve Clarke might well say, talking out of their backside.
One particular objectionable urchin, who must have stood all of three feet tall in his studs, spent a couple of minutes after the game offering a less than complimentary appraisal of my performance. Apparently, for example, shouting isn’t allowed in boys’ football and is punishable by a free-kick. You learn something new every day.
As for the spectators! Their conduct of the smattering of onlookers in what was effectively a kickabout left much to be desired. One especially joyless parent on the sidelines took time to inform me “that was a blue ball” after one of my dubious calls. Had he sensed my deep-rooted anti-blue agenda?
Then there was my positioning. I made Willie Young look like Kylian Mbappe as a I lumbered about the pitch trying to keep up with the action. But I lost count of the occasions I found myself either in the way of play or in a hopeless vantage point.
How do referees possibly work out in the blink of an eye if a player who was in an offside position had been interfering with play after a goal is scored by a team mate? How do they cope with making such a call in front of tens of thousands of people? The mind truly boggled.
Several Stella after the ordeal, I concluded that referees are selfless not clueless individuals, have a nigh on impossible task and deserve our sympathy and support not abuse and opprobrium.
At the very least, they need VAR. The system, as we saw at Russia 2018, isn’t perfect, but in an age when every passage of play is filmed from half a dozen different angles and incidents dissected the instant they happen, it would help quell a growing disaffection with match officials and make their lives easier.
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