A blog about the highs and lows of refereeing grassroots football

An u16 boys match in the cup.   It’s a muddy pitch and the players struggle to string two passes together.  But it’s a fairly mild mannered affair…. Until the 37th minute, when the away team no 14 decides to call…

Girls matches are always a lot easier than boys.  There’s less aggression, less swearing, less dissent. And so it proved today on a very wet and cold morning.  There was only one foul all match. The challenge in these matches…

The more you ref, the more confident you get. I guess I’ve refereed about 25 matches now, and I learn something every time – once I get to 100 matches, I will be much, much better than I am now…

Perhaps not the most exciting start to this blog. I had expected to be writing about badly-behaved players or coaches, but instead today’s match was almost incident free. It was an U17/U18 match in driving rain, with the home team…

I referee youth football in the south of England as well as coaching an U14 team. I thought I’d set this blog up having come across the rather brilliant Referee Tales and am going to blog about my experiences –…