Liam Trotter was in Hanoi, Vietnam, when an email that changed the course of his life dropped into his inbox and led to him standing here, seconds before kick-off, being asked by former Premier League referee Lee Mason to check if he remembers which pockets his yellow and red cards are in.
In more than 400 EFL games, notably for Millwall and Bolton Wanderers, the request is not something the former midfielder ever had to consider, but as one of the first cohort of ex-professionals training to become referees Trotter is quickly getting used to life on the other side.
Remembering where your cards are seems the most basic of requirements, but then there’s probably little worse for a referee than to brandish a card confidently above your head, only to realise you have accidentally sent a player off.
Trotter pats his pockets – then it’s game time.
We are at the Westwood 3g pitch on the Warwick University campus, where the ex-players take it in turns, in 15-minute slots, to referee and run the lines. The football is decent quality, contested between two sides from the Pro:Direct Academy, where youngsters who didn’t quite make the cut at clubs are handed a second chance.
The referee coaches, including former Premier League officials Phil Dowd and Mason, stand on the touchline assessing performances and scribbling notes.
It is a world away from when Trotter first learned of the opportunity while travelling the globe with his wife after retiring from playing.
The 36-year-old had stroked elephants in Khao Sok, met monkeys in the Amazon, ridden camels in the Thar Desert, but wasn’t sure where the rest of his life would take him when he returned to England with a clear head and a blank slate.
“We were a couple of months from coming home and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Trotter tells The i Paper. “Then I saw this email.”
Trotter didn’t fancy coaching and, half-way through his playing career when he let his mind wander towards what comes next, had been intrigued by the prospect of refereeing. Back then, however, there were no opportunities.
Climbing the referee ladder usually takes around 15 years. Most at the top start in their teens and early 20s. “By the time you started to get anywhere you’d want to be you’d be 50 years old,” Trotter says. “It was always one of those things, and I never thought about it again.”
Until all that changed with the formation of the Player to Match Official programme, a joint initiative run by the PGMOL and the PFA training ex-pros to become professional referees.
Along with 120 other former and current players, Trotter applied. To whittle them down, during the interview process he was asked to record a three-minute video explaining why he wanted to do it.
“One of the questions was tell us something interesting about yourself. I said, ‘What’s interesting about me is I’m sat here in an Airbnb in Kuala Lumpur, I’ve been travelling the world for 12 months which gives me an array of life experience on top of my career that very few candidates for this will have’.”
Back to the cold, breezy pitch in Coventry, there’s some confusion.
Peter Vincenti, a 38-year-old former midfielder at Stevenage, is running the line and flags for offside when a header is scored from a corner. Offside from a corner? The decision puzzles everyone on the touchline.
Next, he flags again for a penalty when striker and goalkeeper clash in what, in real-time, appears merely a coming together.
On the other line, Trotter declines to flag for a penalty when a striker goes down in the box a few yards away from him. When it’s his turn in the middle, he is composed and in control.
But there’s another moment of uncertainty when the ball is deflected for a corner, and Trotter initially gestures for one, but George Smith, the former defender now linesman, flags for offside. Trotter sides with his colleague.
All this will be dissected in a few hours back in the classroom.
Trotter says he feels nervous when he stands in the middle of the pitch, kitted out all in black, whistle in hand ready to blow for kick-off, although it is no different to the pre-match nerves he experienced as a player.
The course has been running for six months of its three years and in one of Trotter’s early games he recalls seeing a foul yet taking a moment before registering, “Oh wait that’s me”!
“There was a slight delay in my mind. That split second (he clicks his fingers) for me to realise I’m that guy, I’m the one who needs to give that free-kick.
“Even in today’s game, once I came off and logically thought about it, I realised I didn’t get some things right.”
After the game, the ref hopefuls walk back to Radcliffe, a building on campus that acts, when they get together several times a year, as accommodation, classrooms and dining hall. They are paid a £40,000 salary for the three years.
A quick shower then into classrooms where they split into groups for reviews from each other and the tutors.
The feedback is surprisingly brutal. But then, footballers are used to this. Having every action dissected and critiqued is all they have known. Analysis sessions aren’t highlights reels – they’re mistakes, areas to improve, decisions they got wrong. This is no different.
The players are praised for their “scanning” and general decision-making, but told their movement is lots of trotting and sprinting. They’re not moving like referees yet. Referees move with purpose.
“You’re moving but don’t really know where you need to be,” they’re told.
It’s an interesting point. Usually from six or seven years old, players have learned to adopt the spaces where they can evade an opponent and receive the ball. Now they must do the complete opposite.
Around 10 to 15 yards away from the action is, according to experienced officials, optimum.
One of the group is scolded for using a yellow whistle. Referees don’t bring attention on themselves.
And there is emphasis on selling decisions, of blowing “a strong whistle”, of sharpening body language. It’s described as taking everyone watching on a journey: if you make a call and don’t look convinced by it, how can you expect everyone else to be?
Several of them displayed a tendency to commentate on the game, calling out things like, “Don’t jump in”. At this level, that’s fine, but at elite level officials are connected via microphones, and they will be told to be quiet.
Often, there are long periods of silence between officials. When they speak, it must be with purpose, power and impact.
While all this is going on, analysts busy at laptops have finished editing video footage of the match and they load Vincenti’s contentious calls on a big screen.
In slow motion, it’s clear the striker nicked the ball away from the goalkeeper a split second before the goalkeeper took him out, and from the corner there was an offside player blocking the goalkeeper’s line of sight.
Two great calls. They applaud in the room, and joke he should be on a player-to-lino course.
After an hour, it’s lunchtime – an all-you-can-eat buffet with options that would not look out of place in Premier League training ground canteens.
Trotter then joins The i Paper to discuss, well, why on earth someone would want to become a referee.
Officials have become a lightning rod for everything wrong with the game, increasingly polarised figures, blamed for everything by everyone at some stage, praised for little.
Do the job well, and nobody notices. Make one tiny mistake in an otherwise good performance, and it can explode online. Make a major call pundits and fans disagree with in a major televised game and it can result in death threats and police investigations.
“The pressure is the same bubble I’ve been in for 18 years,” Trotter says. “Yes, there’s a lot of things different about being a referee. Yes, I have so much to learn.
“But I’ve been under scrutiny, I’ve been under the pressure of that football environment. To me that doesn’t really seem daunting.”
It has, Trotter says, been “oddly familiar”. The night before one of his recent games his wife turned to him and said, “Pre-match?”, just like she had done in his playing days. And they ate tofu, sweet potato and broccoli he always had the night before matches.
But does the prospect of living always one game away from the edge of a thunderstorm not put him off the profession?
“For sure it’s a consideration,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a relief after my career was over that I don’t have to deal with that anymore. At the same time, I kind of missed it. I like something being on the line.”
Trotter has an exceptionally calm and considerate demeanour. You can see why refereeing suits him.
As a player he was rarely sent off. He admits he had a few rows with referees, but never went into games with the intention of getting into them, like some teammates and opponents. “Maybe if I see someone who I said some bad stuff to I’ll apologise!”
He describes football as “a hot-blooded game” but is adamant that “abusing a referee isn’t acceptable”.
“There are emotions, you can lose them, but we all know everyone has emotions and everyone deals with them, in every work place you have to learn to handle them,” he adds.
“If you’re angry, swearing at someone isn’t acceptable. Even though in football emotions are high, it doesn’t make it acceptable.
“A player screaming in a ref’s face or players surrounding a referee, fans shouting abuse, none of that’s acceptable. It’s about changing that narrative of, it’s just football, it happens. No, it’s not. We’ve moved on.”
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