Referees (football)

After reading a post about referees written by a friend of mine I started thinking about my feuds with referees and how it highlights the fact that I am everything that I hate in others. Mild tangent - I can't stand people who think they are above certain aspects in life that everyone takes part in but I consider myself to be way above starbucks, it is a horrible place that serves horrible coffee at inflated prices to stupid people who are trying to appear like they are vaguely cultured (ie. everyone except me). Does this mean I hate myself? That is a topic for another day.

Anyway, back on track, referees. I am a referee, not only this but I am an incredibly stubborn referee, what I see is what happened and whatever I decide is obviously right. I have been qualified nearly two years, I passed a practical course so already consider myself above the traditionalist theory course-ists. Not only this, I got every single question right on the multiple choice section of the exam and passed flawlessly on my practical exam, even receiving comments such as "wow, when you put that shirt on, you just look like a referee, a proper one."

When I referee I often encounter twats who argue with my every decision, they think they know better and stop at nothing to get in my head, this of course causes me to look for every opportunity to penalise them or even punish them. I am the ref, I am in charge and that's how it is. However, when I am a player I am worse than those who argue with me because I actually know what I'm talking about, putting referees on the back foot. Quite often I am a joy to referee, if the ref is qualified and consistent (I can manage bad refereeing because we are all human but inconsistent refereeing is unforgivable) then we get on well, obviously they get things wrong but you have to accept it. My problem is with unqualified referees who referee by their own rules. An excellent source of these people are school football matches, PE teachers who think they rule the world and A-level students who can't play football but try to help out anyway. One example of this was in a school match against Christ's Hospital, the referee was a right tosser, didn't know the offside rule and couldn't keep up with play. Losing 4-2 with a few minutes left I made a perfectly timed run onto a through ball, outpacing at least 1 defender. I rounded the goalkeeper, thinking this could be my moment of glory before being felled like a mighty oak tree by the goalkeeper. He went right into my ankle with his studs, just outside the 18 yard box. The foul alone merited a caution at least, the positioning and situation demanded a red card. Here came the 'referee', the cards were out, justice would be done. Hang on, that card is yellow, what a cowardly decision! When asked for an explanation he said "he wasn't last man". When arguing against this I said he was, I was in a far better situation to see that he was, he was the only player in front of me. Secondly I was forced to explain that last man is not even the rule, the rule is "denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity" which it definitely was. He threatened to caution me. Got him back though, refused to shake his hand and I always shake hands and apologise to referees I have given a hard time. I have many more examples of poor refereeing, just ask me sometime.