I wouldn’t wish being a ref on anyone Smiley Of course they’re still trying to drag me in kicking and screaming for my Grade 9. Don’t know if they’ll succeed this year or not. But the RefBlog is always a fun read as you get to see just how crazy it can get (and sometimes how uneventful it can be in a match with good players and coaches.) I had a good laugh as he described a scene from a recent match.

The call was the old rec chestnut about slide tackles. In the league we let people slide, but not slide tackle, with an extension that sliding into someone, even if you don’t make contact with your opponent, is a foul. I phrase that last sentence carefully, because you can’t foul your own teammate, so when a player, who was a couple feet ahead of his opponents on a chase for the ball, slid to kick it away, I immediately thought "no foul", despite his sliding into his own goalkeeper. The funny bit, was, after the ball went out of play (pretty quickly, although from another teammate, not from the slide itself), the slider started arguing about how this was not a foul, and I shouldn’t call a foul, and something or other.

"Hey, hey, hey," arms up, trying to calm him down, "did I call a foul?"

He stops and looks at me quizzically, it’s clear he expected me to make that call (other refs in that league surely would have), but it hit him that I never blew the whistle. "No?" I grin, because hit also hits him that he didn’t need to argue – I agreed with him. Sheepishly, "Don’t mind me, I’m just talking to myself."

Smiley D’oh! Yellow Card for stupidity! Never argue with the ref, especially if he calls it YOUR way!