http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,677387,00.html

Who's the masochist in the black?

They don't do it for the money - nor the popularity. So why does anyone want to be a Premiership football referee, asks Roy Hattersley

Tuesday April 2, 2002
The Guardian

Derision, the psychiatrists tell us, is often more difficult to bear than abuse. Yet there is an elite corps of two dozen hand-picked men who, every winter weekend, willingly subject themselves to 90 minutes of raucous contumely. Usually the contempt is jovial. Occasionally the scorn is vicious. Then the Saturday afternoon ends with a police escort and Sunday morning begins with abusive telephone calls. What makes a sane and rational person subject himself to such humiliation? Why on earth does anyone want to become a Premiership football referee?
Cynics in the stands say that these days they do it for the money - an annual retainer of £33,000 and £500 more every time they "officiate" at a Premiership game. At the end of the season they have taken home about what David Beckham earns in a week - but it is still good pay for what remains essentially a part-time job. However, anyone who honestly imagines that they whistle for cash has never talked to a top-class referee. To them, every Saturday afternoon is a test of courage, concentration and consistency. Hard though it is for normal people to understand, referees believe - with an almost mystic conviction - in refereeing.

Normal people - particularly the men and women who sit in the stands and huddle together on what is left of the terraces - do not understand referees at all. The stereotype is too strong to allow the prejudices to break down. Once upon a time, the football grounds of England echoed with taunts about guide dogs and white sticks. Now they reverberate with chants about obscure ancestry and deviant sexual practices. Referees know what the fans think of them.

Peter Jones - a BT sales manager by original trade, who officiated in the FA Cup final back in 1999 and has since taken charge of innumerable internationals - has no doubt about the qualities referees need to keep control of the game and themselves sane.

"A referee," he says, "must be calm and dedicated. Above all he must not expect to be Mr Popular. Never expect an easy ride from either the players or spectators." Or, apparently, from managers. Last January, after Jones sent off Sheffield United's Paul Devlin, Neil Warnock - United's manager - claimed that, when the alleged offence was committed "the ref was looking the wrong way. He didn't do anything until the linesman flagged and the crowd roared. Twenty years ago we had the best referees in the world. Now we have the worst."

Anyone who endures constant excoriation - trial by television replay, conviction by Sunday newspaper journalists and punishment by regular abuse - must be slightly mad. And so referees are. But they are mad in a way that, in other professions, only excites admiration. Having become referees - usually after not very successful playing careers in semi-professional football - they become obsessed with the notion of the special virtues that referees must possess. And their whole lives are dedicated to proving - principally to themselves - that they possess them. Paul Durkin, a Dorchester housing manager, was a world cup referee in 1998. But when he talks about "wanting to be the best" he is not thinking of a comparison with his colleagues. He has a picture in his mind of the perfect referee and he quests after that sublime condition in the way in which Sir Galahad chased the Holy Grail.

The chief characteristic of the good referee, says Durkin, is "hardness" - both mental and physical. He must be man enough to make decisions that are not popular. The willingness to accept punishment is a constant theme. Like the early Christians in ancient Rome, referees regard persecution as a badge of honour - proof that they never compromise. There is nothing masochistic about the "we can take it" preoccupation with the way in which they embrace criticism. But then, Antarctic explorers do not welcome frostbite. However, they boast that by pressing on even when their toes fall off they demonstrate how different they are from ordinary men.

The Magnificent Twenty Four who make up the select referees' group - a title that suggests to theologians that they are predestined for a place in heaven - are highly motivated men with strong opinions about their own abilities. It is not surprising that they have created myths to live by and a folklore that helps them repel enemies. But the mythology has filtered down from the great stadia of the Premiership to the parks and recreation grounds. That is, in part, a triumph for the Football Association's system of referee recruitment and training, which offers the chance of slow progress from working men's club league matches to an FA Cup final. But it is also because the activity attracts a certain sort of man. That man is proud that when a £50,000-a-week footballer with muscles and an ugly disposition snarls, eyeball to eyeball, that the goal scorer was offside, he neither apologises and changes his mind nor punches the aggressor on the nose. That pride has filtered down into the parks.

"Mac" Macpherson, a Parcel Force delivery driver and ex-regular soldier, officiates in the East Anglian Jewson League. Handing out his first yellow card "came naturally. I gave him a warning. Then a couple more. But he wouldn't listen." John Steel, a financial controller with the Cambridgeshire county council, referees in the Kershaw primary league. He says that when, during his third game in charge, he found it necessary to give his first official warning, he could feel his hand shaking. But both men had identical ideas about their duty - without fear or favour. Steel's greatest moment was running the line at a youth cup match between Norwich City and Newcastle United. Macpherson's biggest crowd was "between 600 and 800". At best they are paid £17 for a wet and windy afternoon's work. And their only regret is that, starting in their mid-30s, they have only 15 years to work their way to the top.

Keith Hill - an FA regional manager who has almost made the final leap from traditional Football League black to trendy Premiership green - knows that "refereeing has now become a career". But he still talks about it as if it were a vocation. He first heard the call when he was 14 and acting as linesman for his brother's team while his father watched from behind the goal. Like all referees, the idea that what he does is, for a man who loves football, a poor second best to playing, has never entered his head. They also serve who only blow and book.

The belief in the possession of superior qualities does, from time to time, cause problems for the beautiful game. Chief among them is the notion that, notwithstanding all the training - running to exhaustion on treadmills and wearing the heart-monitor watches which both check cardiac performance and act as a proof that the daily exercise regimes have been completed - their minds are as highly tuned as their bodies. Referees are proud to admit mistakes when they can be rectified. And when they cannot "we put it out of our minds immediately", says Peter Jones. "It never hangs over us for the rest of the game." And although they meet with their "assistants" (linesmen to you and me) before a game "to talk tactics and discuss the likely conduct of the players", once the kick-off whistle blows neither a player's past record nor his known propensities are held against him. "All that is put out of our minds."

On the Saturday before I talked to the referees, I had watched Paul Alcock referee a first division match between Millwall and Sheffield Wednesday. Much to my satisfaction, Wednesday won a game that included the sending off of a Millwall substitute. When Alcock held up the red card, a picture came instantly into my mind. Four years ago, while refereeing a match between Sheffield Wednesday and Arsenal, Alcock had sent off Paulo Di Canio and the Italian had poked him in the chest. As a result of that prod, Alcock had staggered across the pitch and collapsed in a heap near the touchline. I have been hugely prejudiced against him ever since. One of the problems for football supporters is accepting that referees have qualities they do not possess.