I thought I had a bad second half...

According to RussiaToday, this ref seems to have hit the bottle at half time!

Style

They say you should develop your own style as a referee.. Maybe Clésio Moreira dos Santos has taken it a bit far.. despite his extremely camp style apparently he's not at all gay

"Friendly"

Well second game went OK but lots to learn from it.

The first half I was very pleased with; felt I was in control, definite and established a good relationship with the players, being quite vocal.

I think I may have relaxed a bit at half time as I felt the game got away from me a bit at the start of the second half.. I missed a few pushes and niggly tackles and tended with quite a few players arguing with me and each other. Also my positioning was not great a couple of times and I ended up in the way of play.

There was a massive downpour on this cold, windy day and that seemed to calm everyone and the last quarter of the match was quite straight forward.

Very friendly home club and the manager even brought me a cup of tea after the game.

I'm just watching the England friendly and the ref has only had to give two free kicks in first 35 minutes... reckon he has it easier than us refs at low levels!

Booked for Saturday

Had a mail last night asking me to referee a friendly on Saturday so that will be my 2nd match. My ref mentor says there's no such thing as friendlies and you have to ref it as a normal match... we shall see.

Feedback

I contacted the club to get them to confirm the cautioned player's name. As I suspected the name given to me was false. They also said "the feedback I got was that you had a good game, as I believe it was your first match. Well done and keep it up."

So that was good to hear.

First match!

Well I'm just back from my first match. I think it went OK overall.

It was at least as difficult as I thought it was going to be - mentally and physically!

A hard bouncy pitch causing lots of high feet and only one linesman did not make for the best conditions.

I think in the first half I could have managed the contact around the high ball a bit better, perhaps letting too much pushing and mistimed jumps into players go but I felt happier with that in the second half.

Players are asking for diecisions in their favour the whole time and there was a bit "how do you get that" and "you must be joking" style feedback but almost all the players responded to a simple "calm down".

There was one player who it became obvious would be my only real problem. He was playing centre forward for the away team and he was just constantly niggling, jumping out of tackles and asking for free kicks, not retreating 10 at free kicks, deliberately bumping opposing players as he walked past them and so on.

At one point waiting for a goal kick to be taken in the first half there was some minor pushing between him and the opposing captain and I could see they were arguing although I couldn't hear exactly what was said. I stopped the game and pulled both players into a neutral area of the pitch. I explained that I thought the conditions weren't helping but that I needed them both to just get on with the game. I asked them to shake hands but the wouldn't, I asked again and they still wouldn't so I restarted play - regretted that I should have left it at the talking to.

He carried on being niggling and I gave a number of free kicks against him (and some for him). After about 50 minutes and another trip from him I stopped the game , pulled him aside and said "that's your last one, next time you're in the book" (I didn't actually mean to be that explicit with the threat). Sure enough a few minutes later he committed another foul and I decided to book him for persistent infringement. I blew my whistle and he start walking away muttering "f**k off" possibly to himself, possibly to me. I whistled persistently and he came over and I cautioned him. I slightly regret not sending him off for foul and abusive language.

The other thing is I think he gave me a false name as the name I wrote down was different from what his players were calling him. I've asked my mentor how I handle that in my report.

At the end of the game more than half the players came and shook my hand and thanked me. Two from each side said "you had a good game" so that pleased me. One from the cautioned player's side said "sorry you got a mouthy one but he's always like that".

I don't have any more matches booked in yet.

First appointment

I have my first appointment - I will be starting my referee career on the 21st March.

Ref Kit

My kit arrived yesterday: shirt, shorts, socks, watch, flags, pump, two sets of cards, notebook, two whistles.. about £100 investment all in. Tried the kit on last night... kind of odd seeing myself in the full black kit!

Tried to register on the FA website as a referee but found I have only half the details I need... I don't think the FA is very technically literate from what I've experienced so far.

Just waiting for my first match appointment now. I think it might be two weeks today.

Level 9

I am now a Level 9 referee. Just back from county HQ and passed the exam. The pass mark is 75% and they wouldn't give out my exact score but said it was "an easy pass" so I think I was around 90%. 5 of our group of 31 failed.

I now must referee 6 games in order to be promoted to a level 7 referee and have been appointed a qualified mentor to help me through these first matches.

I'm going to send off the local saturday league league referee registration form tomorrow and wait for my first appointment. With all the bad weather this year I expect there will be midweek matches so I should be able to get my 6 games in this season.

I'm still waiting for my kit that I ordered last week to arrive... can't start without that!

Things I didn't expect from the course

• An attacker can be offside whilst off the pitch beyond the goal line
• Whistles have different tones, which is why a ref should have two as a ref on neighbouring pitch may have the same tone
• We don't talk about "pitches" any more, it's the "field of play"
• That so many kids of school age would want to qualify as referees... then I found out it counts toward Duke Of Edinburgh award and some other award too
  

Why become a ref?

I decided a while back to become a football referee. I stopped platying active football two years ago when I had a back op. I have a 7-year-old son who plays mini-soccer.

I mentioned to a few friends that I was thinking of becoming a referee and they all said "you'd be good at that"... is that a good thing? I'm not sure.

After some prevarication I signed up for a course run by a county FA. I finished it last Monday and the exam is tomorrow night. If I pass I will be a Level 9 referee, qualified to refereee "parks football".

So why do it? I want to see if I am any good at it...