To those of us who grew up in the 1990s, referees and footballers looked like very different people. Footballers: athletes, physical specimens, always ridiculously taller in person than they looked on the television. Referees: looked older, often fairly out of shape, schoolmasterly (some of them were actual schoolmasters, which explained it).
I’m sorry to say that that has now changed. There sits before me, in a conference room at a hotel on Loughborough University’s campus, a group of 20-odd referees, ranging in age from mid-20s to early-30s, I estimate.
They all wear identical black Nike tracksuits with EA Sports FC 24 branding. They all engage in the light banter of young sportspeople, two parts laughing to one part actual words. They look like a group of athletes.
I am here because a two-day training and development camp is about to commence. Those sat in black are members of the Referee Development Group, formed in summer 2022 as part of the Elite Referee Development Plan. The aim? To increase the fluidity between English domestic leagues for referee promotion and to fast-track the most talented referees.
This, surely, is what we all want. Whether you are able to escape the noise of refereeing mania, or believe that refereeing standards are worse than ever before, or have placed yourself in the PGMOL corruption camp (for which I have little time, sorry), we should all be able to agree that having the highest number of high-level officials as possible is the aim. Anything else is bad faith.
Those within this room are the cream of the next crop, or at least that’s the plan. They applied to be accepted into a group that started with 28 men and women and has now reached 42. Their applications included match assessments, physical tests and interviews. Their awarded contracts offer them a greater opportunity to dedicate more time to preparation, recovery and learning.
This is not the only way that a referee can progress (the cohort is added to annually and promotion up the leagues is perfectly possible without being in it), but it is certainly a recognition of identified talent.
In return for their commitment to the profession (while still working in other jobs, so that commitment is a significant undertaking), these officials are invited to these training camps and given time with performance analysts, sports scientists and psychologists alongside dedicated fitness coaches and referee educators. The sheer range of that support staff is entirely new to me.
The day starts with a discussion led by Alan Wiley, former Premier League referee and current educator. Immediately, a problem is set: under the current laws, a manager who deliberately delays the restart of a game (by throwing or kicking away the ball, for example) should be sent off. But what happens if, Wiley asks the group, you’re dealing with a player-manager who is named as a substitute? Red or yellow, as it would be for a player? It’s like a real-life You Are The Ref and you better believe I’m into it.
(The answer: it depends. If the player-manager is acting as a manager, in his technical area and instructing players, it’s a red card and he cannot be used as a substitute. If he’s acting as a player, perhaps stretching down the touchline (although he cannot coach from that position – referees must look out for that and punish it), it’s a yellow. Obviously I guess wrong).
The first speaker is Sam Barrott, who is simultaneously a member of this group and also one of its current success stories, having already refereed nine Premier League games. The previous evening he was in charge of Middlesbrough vs Chelsea, an EFL Cup semi-final first leg, and he’s here to offer an insight into a whirlwind 16 months that has taken him from League Two to the highest domestic level.
Barrott gives advice on practical things, such as how to spot the signs of when you should hand your notice in at your regular job (he was a teacher), how to deal with the inevitable doubt that creeps in over whether things will work out and how to deal with nerves. He asks everyone in the group to write down their highest and lowest moments and their professional dreams and then each reflect on each other’s. The lows are usually individual moments of matches and, Barrott implores, they cannot take those with them forever. It’s amazing just how clearly they remember each one when recounting.
After Barrott and a short break, Anthony Taylor begins his own talk on body language, situation management and communication – with your assistance, with players and with managers. It sticks out that Taylor knows every attendee’s name and this is very much friendly ribbing rather than lofty lecturing.
Taylor begins by asking Kirsty Dowle, who refereed the 2022 Women’s FA Cup final, to describe a series of shapes that another referee must draw blind, to emphasise the importance of clear, concise language.
The group discusses a series of incidents including extra balls on the pitch, quick free-kicks from slightly incorrect places, being able to immediately judge whether an injury has been sustained to the head and distinguishing the line between sufficient or insufficient contact for an offence to have taken place at full speed. As becomes abundantly clear to this amateur observer, there is enough to think about in every incident to give me a migraine.
But Taylor is there because of who he is too. What becomes clear during the camp is that this is intended to be a support network as well as a place of learning – every person mentions the word “family”. They will need to look for each other as such. These young referees are all enthusiastic to get to the top level. Along that pathway, there will be scrutiny, pressure and abuse – to pretend otherwise is deeply naive. The only way to progress is to be given the chance, but rapid promotion can lead to being ill-prepared for this tidal wave.
Taylor, now 14 years a Premier League referee and 11 as a FIFA-appointed official, has that experience. He’s happy to come to each training camp and to speak to these referees whenever they need help or advice. He’s also happy to talk to i about the difficulties of what they are about to experience.
“People really underestimate the challenges of top-level refereeing,” Taylor says. “The general perception of football fans and media is that a decision is wrong and it’s ‘Oh my god how has the referee not seen this with the benefit of a camera angle behind the goal or a still picture – this is an outrage that this decision is wrong’, without understanding the fundamentals of the whole process and how a decision is reached. Add to that: people expect perfection and that will never exist.
“You can get them thinking that they have done their best. You teach them to be humble and honest when they have made mistakes. But there is still another layer on top of that: people’s mental health and resilience can only stretch so far unless you are continuously working on it.
“Some of them probably haven’t considered how all the scrutiny and grief that might come as a result of a game on a Saturday impacts them as an individual and also their family. Your partner, your kids. They’re not necessarily prepared for it.
“Everyone has different ways of dealing with it. Some don’t speak to their family about the rubbish that’s going on. If your partner isn’t into football they might not see everything that happens on the TV.
“If they do, sometimes you’re better off cutting them off from your work environment so then that’s at least a distraction for you when you get home. There are examples of people being caught in the crossfire of unwanted media or fan attention and it’s difficult to get people ready for those situations.”
That issue of abuse, particularly when they combine with an individual’s knowledge that they have made a mistake, is something that Barrott discusses with i too. He’s 30 years old. He knows football. He knows when he might have got something wrong.
“Those are the low moments,” Barrott says. “You do need a support network, whether that be other referees, your family or your coaches. There’s a time when every referee will want to chuck their bag in the corner when they get in. They don’t want to see their kit for a few days.
“There’s not one referee who I’ve met that isn’t a massive fan of football. The same as fans, coaches, players, we’re here because we love football. We go out to make an honest judgement. Sometimes we get that wrong, but we’re our own worst critics.
“I’ll go home and I have to leave my bag in the car and switch off because I think I’ve had a bad game. That’s when you get family around you, friends, sports psychologists, and try to work out how to reset. Because you haven’t got the time to mope about. Any negative space just puts you in a worse position to produce your best in the next game.
“What the group has allowed us to do is to take stock. If it’s just a decision that you have got wrong, what could you have done differently? Should you have moved slightly left or right? I had one this season where if I had gone three steps to my left I might have got a better view and potentially made a better decision. And you’re talking literally three steps over the course of one second. It’s the minute details that change the picture of what you’re seeing.”
Again to a relative novice, perhaps the most interesting session is hosted by Irfan Kawri, who is an insights coach. His role is to coach and mentor match officials to gain a greater understanding of the game, either through one-to-one or group sessions, practical and theoretical.
Although perfection may not be possible, if a referee has a feel for the game, understanding how phases of play are likely to develop can certainly help.
Barrott explains: “We get our appointments generally on Monday at 4pm. The first thing I do is watch at least 45 minutes of both sides’ most recent games. That allows me to see how they set up in terms of specific formations, who will play where. That might give me information on how they will transition, how deep they might sit, whether they will play a three or a four at the back.
“We also get analysis clips on set piece routines, patterns of play. Teams will obviously change so we need to lose any tunnel vision, but we’re zooming in on how things might develop. I’ll find out who might be the playmaker, does play tend to go down a certain side, do they use a specific play to bring play across to then switch it, does one particular player’s movement indicate the press being triggered. All that governs my position on the pitch at any one time.”
Trailblazers and role models
That becomes particularly crucial as football develops. The speed of Premier League football has increased rapidly over the last decade; it is also above the EFL and National League, which presents a challenge to officials.
The style is different too. In the top flight, referees must position themselves more often for a shot goal-kick and then potential press – the next flashpoint may well be 30 yards from goal. A decade ago, it would likely be over the halfway line, where a central defender and forward engaged in an aerial duel. The game has changed and officials have had to change with it.
The answer, obviously, lies in greater fitness. One of the reasons for hosting the camp at Loughborough University is due to its gym facilities, virtually unsurpassed in Europe (and certainly at any European university campus).
The referees start on the bikes, before those who officiated the previous evening are sent away for rest. The rest are split into groups for weights and strength training, doing sets in pairs or threes. Dowle and Emily Heaslip, the two women at the camp, understandably work together.
Dowle and Heaslip, who this week has been appointed onto FIFA’s list of appointed referees and who refereed last year’s Women’s FA Cup final, are important to mention here. Last month, Rebecca Welch became the first female referee in Premier League history and Sam Allison became the first black referee in the Premier League for 15 years.
If the aim is to increase the pool of elite referees as much as possible, one obvious strategy is to engage more with those within society who feel as if they have been largely disengaged until now. Or, to be a little more blunt: why on earth would refereeing only be a pursuit for white males? Trailblazers, path-treaders and role models must be created.
“If you look back to women in men’s football five or six years ago, it was pretty much unheard of,” says Heaslip. She got into refereeing when still playing but growing slightly disillusioned under a semi-professional contract and a desire to do something else. Heaslip enrolled upon a refereeing course and believes this coaching satisfies her need for feedback and competition with herself. She intends to officiate as high as she can in the men’s game.
“The women’s game is growing massively, but women in men’s sport is increasing too. Opportunities are there, and with it is more respect and understanding that it doesn’t matter what background you come from. We do it for the love of the game, and from a female perspective we just want to be accepted as a referee.
“We as women want to support each other, but being a female in an elite group means that the group supports each other. We’re all here to be better. There’s still occasions when you turn up and people ask one of my assistants ‘Who is reffing today?’ and not look at me because I’m a woman, but we’re getting there. And we’re getting there because we’re good enough.
Farai Hallam is one of several non-white faces at the camp and he fully understands the significance of his journey. He speaks of focusing on his own performance but knowing that there are thousands of people who may relate to his story. Nobody ever sets out to be a role model; they set out to do their best and with it comes the rest. But he’s also adamant that, if he can inspire other people of colour to become referees and give them confidence through his own career, it would be a deeply special achievement.
There’s something else that sticks out about Emily and Farai, though: they are former players. Heaslip was paid to play semi-professionally before switching to refereeing. Hallam was in professional football for three years at Stevenage as a youngster, being paid to play. He dropped into non-league and suffered ill-timed bad injuries and realised that he wasn’t going to get back into the Football League.
If we are to end where we started, with referees looking like athletes, there’s a simple explanation: many of them are athletes. The notion of taking those who fall out of the academy system or professional football and transforming them into referees is not perfect because they are not one coagulated mass; people have different dreams and different journeys to realising them or something close. But it is certainly an idea.
“People are dropping out of boys’ and girls’ academies and realising that they might be in danger of dropping out of the game entirely,” says Hallam. “This might give them another avenue. There’s only 25 people on the field, and to be one of those can give you a new lease of life on football. I still get the buzz but in a different way.
“I hope that it will become more well-trodden. If you look for talent and then you look to nurture it, you can develop it. It requires hard work and sacrifice, but the structure now allows that to happen far more. I know that more than anyone.”
This is all a process. This is a long-term endeavour. Later this year there will be more camps and in the summer there will be a new cohort added to this one. Support staff numbers will have to grow too to match them and a Development Group Director is soon to follow. The hope is that the numbers are reduced because some graduate to become full-time Premier League referees. If the circle completes, they may be back to educate the next generation about the pressures and pitfalls and positives.
Not all will make it. As with players, some peak early and fall away and others just aren’t deemed quite good enough. The money for officials in lower-league and National League means that working around it is necessary and some may choose to prioritise that alternative employment. Some may just decide that it isn’t for them.
But everyone at this camp seems pretty emphatic in their enthusiasm for their profession. Given the mania around the climate of refereeing, it’s impossible not to be heartened and re-energised by their spirit. This can be a lonely profession, training alone and destined soon or sooner to be thrust into the spotlight of outrage culture and media obsession. You need a stern spirit to match the thick skin and physical fitness. In this group, they believe that operating as a family will get them all through.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/HmTlkYn
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