Author: petershelley1

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 the assistant referee a “cheat” and a “f***ing t**t”.  I’m feeling kind so I just…

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 is to remain focused.   You need to be ready to make the right call but…

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 (I hope). But this makes it a bit difficult, in some ways, to give useful…

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 losing 0-7. Very little dissent, which I dealt with by awarding two indirect free-kicks but…

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 – highlighting things I learn and also describing the realities of grassroots refereeing. (I don’t want…