Tuesday, November 22, 2011

If only you had gone to Spec Savers Sir!


I had the pleasure of referring Buxton Thirds against Ashbourne Fourths on Saturday. For the record Buxton won 19-14 and no one got yellow carded or red carded. Sir kept his hands firmly in his pockets. Well it was a Sunny fields and its blooming cold up there. The Ashbourne scrum half, obviously yearning to give up sniping and living off the crumbs of his forwards and take up the whistle was ever so supportive, telling me every time there was a Buxton error. I thanked him early on in the game and asked him nicely not to. Then not so nicely. Then I reversed a penalty to try and get the message across. It worked. However he then seemed bothered about my time keeping and sought to help me out by asking how much longer there was to go? Every two minutes or so it seemed. That is the rugby equivalent of the child on the back seat of a long car journey asking if we are nearly there yet. Irritating and not at all helpful. As we all trouped of headed bar wards some of the players thanked me. One of the grizzled, scared, seen it all front row; suggested that it was a pity I didn’t go to spec savers. I made a note to keep an eye out for him in future games. I drank my beer and headed homeward. I’m not sure about referring yet. The jury is still out. But it was nice to know that tomorrow morning I would wake up and be able to leap out of bed and not feel if I had spent the night beneath a heavy roller.

2 comments:

Ian Plenderleith said...

I left the field at half-time of a boys' U14 football match I was reffing last weekend, and one of the parents said to me, "Have you lost your specs?" Before I could react, he said, "No, I'm not being funny. We found a pair of glasses on the field just before the start of the game." And indeed they had, but they weren't mine. There ends Refereeing Anecdote For Future After-Dinner Speaking Engagements at Refereeing Associations, No. 312.

[I love the word verifications they come up with sometimes - mine below is 'twabsoc'. That really needs to be shoehorned into the English language somehow.]

The Birdwatcher said...

Brave man. A football referee and the U14's. That's scary.