Seeing Red (15 page)

Although I left Euro 2000 worried that I had damaged my chances of going to future tournaments, I don't want to leave it here, in this book, without putting my disappointment into perspective. This narrative, my story, is punctuated by the landmarks of my refereeing life, and some of those conspicuous moments in my career were low points – but if you plotted the graph of my career, most of the line would be very high up in the area representing happiness and excitement, and there would be some real peaks. I had more than a quarter of a century of fantastically joyous times as a referee. I went to places and experienced things that I never dreamed
of when it all started in Division Five of the North Herts League. I loved it.

I am proud and delighted to say that people who mean a lot to me also derived immense pleasure and satisfaction from sharing my adventures. In the final weeks of my final season, my mum was in tears as I drove back from a game at Liverpool. She said, ‘It has been such a long journey.' I thought she was complaining about the blooming M6, but she meant she'd been with me for twenty-seven years. The ‘journey' had started with her driving me to matches, but then, in later years, she'd been around the country and around the world as my guest at amazing places and for astounding events.

Let me tell you about the first few seasons as a professional referee because they were, in the main, blissfully happy. That feeling we had all shared and enjoyed when we were called down to London to be offered our contracts – kids in a sweet shop looking around at each other and grinning – was never far away.

What Philip Don, our manager, and others realized was that the new, improved, professional referees had to demonstrate that they were better than the old, amateur, part-time refs – although we were the same people. The clubs were committing money to pay us and they wanted to see something for their investment. Philip believed – we all did – that the better preparation and the intense level of scrutiny we were putting ourselves through would lead to big improvements. But better decision-making and match-management would be impossible to quantify or prove. Philip calculated, correctly in my view, that the most tangible thing he could deliver was better fitness. And so, particularly in the first year, we were ‘beasted'. We were worked really hard but
because we were all so thrilled about our new lives, and were extremely well motivated, we loved the training. In fact, we trained harder than ever before. Matt Weston, our fitness instructor, had worked with all sorts of sports people, including rowers and table tennis players, and he said we were the easiest group he'd ever had because we just wanted to get fitter and quicker.

We had fortnightly get-togethers in Northamptonshire but for the rest of the time, because our homes were spread around the country, we all had to continue to train on our own. We strapped on heart monitors when we exercised and detailed information was recorded on special watches on our wrists. We then uploaded that information onto our new laptop computers and emailed it to Matt Weston. He devised individual, daily programmes for every one of us.

It was suddenly very different from forcing yourself to go out for a run in the evening after work. Now the physical preparation was relevant and appropriate to the task you were preparing for, and you had time to train properly. We were given carefully considered advice on diet as well. That made a difference because the correct fuel helped us work harder and train better. I loved running anyway and now I could run at a decent time – at eleven in the morning when I was fresh and keen. The fitter I got, the better I felt about myself and the more I enjoyed the training.

A typical week without a midweek game, when we were not having our get-together in Northamptonshire, went like this:

Wherever I had been officiating on the Saturday – working, as I could now call it legitimately – I drove home during the evening after the match. I would try to get back to Tring in time to watch
Match of the Day
, but the first job was to
put my kit in the washing machine and turn it on. Then I telephoned the Press Association news agency with the details of cautions and sendings-off from my match. The FA had arranged for the Press Association to collect and collate that information for them.

On Sunday, I sometimes went for a short run to break up the lactic acid in my legs. But, if I am honest, I usually didn't bother. I just chilled out, spent time with my family and watched more football on TV.

On Monday, I would receive Matt Weston's exercise schedule by email. Before starting training, however, I would sit down and read the sports pages of a couple of newspapers. Some referees avoided them. Steve Bennett, for instance, said that he never read newspaper reports because they would bring negativity. But I regarded the sports pages as the equivalent of a trade journal. Football was now my business and I needed to know what was going on.

Then, at 11 am, I'd do my training. Monday's workout, which involved proper warm-ups, stretching and warm-downs, usually took about two hours. Then, at about lunchtime, I would receive the email telling me my fixture for the next weekend and I would exchange emails with the two assistant referees to make arrangements.

On Tuesdays, the training was usually a harder session. By the time I returned home from it, the post had normally arrived, including a ProZone disc with the computerized analysis of my match the previous Saturday. ProZone had up to twelve cameras positioned around every top stadium, capturing the action on the pitch. A computer programme plotted the coordinates and movements of every player every tenth of a second. All the top clubs used the data to investigate their own performances and get details of opponents.

I was one of the refs who found ProZone really useful. For example, there were videos clips of specific incidents, shown from four different angles at three different speeds. They gave me the definitive answer to whether I had made the right decision. If I'd got it wrong, why did I get it wrong? Could I have improved my positioning to get a better view? Should I be working on getting more width to provide a better angle. Tuesday's emails included a copy of the report on my performance compiled by the assessor. I would read that carefully – although it was sometimes contradicted by ProZone.

Wednesday was normally a rest day. Thursday would involve a reasonably high-intensity training session. Friday's was a light session, concentrating on speed work – short, sharp stuff. Then on Friday afternoon you would leave for the game.

Match weekends were very different once we had become full-time pros. On one occasion before we were professional, we had a meeting and were addressed by a psychologist. He asked us what was our biggest fear – and you might be surprised by the answer. It was not that we would make a big mistake, not that we would get abused horribly and not that we would be beaten up in the car park. Of the twenty refs in the room, eighteen said that their biggest fear was that they might not get to the game on time – that they might get caught in traffic and be too late. I was one of the eighteen who put my hand up and owned up to that fear.

For midweek games before we were professional, for instance, I would be working in the morning and say to myself, ‘Right, Pollie, you have got to leave the office by one o'clock.' Inevitably, it would be a quarter to two before I would run out to the car thinking, ‘If I get a move on I might
still have time to stop at a service station for a sandwich.' Making a journey in that frame of mind, and arriving at the ground flustered, was far from ideal.

We did stay overnight at hotels before some games when we were amateurs, but, because we only had a £60 allowance, we would stay at a Travelodge, or somewhere equally cheap. And, of course, we had to find our own way to the ground, which was not always straightforward. The first opportunity we had to get together with the assistant referees and the fourth official was in the guests' lounge at the stadium. They had probably suffered a fraught journey as well.

My Mum and Dad loved the old system. They came with me, came to the guest lounge and met other mums, dads and family members. It was a nice, social occasion – but it was not the correct way for a referee to prepare to take charge of a major match.

Once we had become professional, if a game was more than 120 miles from home, we stayed overnight in a decent hotel which was booked for us. I drove everywhere, because public transport meant the chance of being with fans of one of the teams you were refereeing. The two assistants also stayed at the same hotel, and we would meet the night before the game and catch up with news and have a bit of a laugh.

When I was professional I always planned my routine backwards from kick-off time. In other words, it did not matter whether the match started at 3 pm, at one o'clock or at 5.45. I would always have the same routine.

But let us assume we are talking about a Saturday game kicking off at 3 pm. In those circumstances, at 11 am I would meet the two assistants in a pre-booked meeting room at the
hotel and have another chat. Then, an unmarked people carrier took us to the match in plenty of time. The driver knew all the routes to the ground and so a lot of stress was taken away. The people carriers were introduced for all the Select Group referees as a direct result of the incident when the car I was in with Julia was attacked at Middlesbrough.

Anyway, I normally liked to leave the hotel at midday. I didn't have any lunch at the hotel but made sure I'd had a good breakfast. I liked to conduct the pitch inspection at about 12.30 and then sit and watch the first half of that day's 12.45 match on television. Probably, at that stage, I'd have a sandwich. At 1.30 I would go back out onto the pitch and give my instructions to the two assistant referees. I liked to give my briefing on the pitch because I could refer to specific areas of the field of play and we could all visualize situations we were discussing.

At a quarter to two it would be the security briefing. The home club's safety officer and a senior police officer – either the match controller or his deputy – would arrive at the referee's room together with the police officer who was going to be on duty in the tunnel. The safety officer explained the circumstances in which I should stop the game and get the players off the field. He told me the codes and procedures for bomb scares, fires, crowd evacuation and so on. The senior police officer then announced how many away fans were expected, where they would be in the ground and whether any known troublemakers were among them. Sometimes, the officer would say, ‘The police have no intelligence today.' I found the best policy was not to make a joke reply, like, ‘That's why the country is in such a state then.'

One hour before kick-off, the team sheets arrived. Some were brought by managers, some by assistant managers.
Both were fine by me. For instance, Pat Rice, the assistant manager at Arsenal, always brought their team list and so if there was any point Arsenal wanted to make, or any remark I needed to deliver, then we could do so. Chelsea always sent Gary Staker, their player liaison officer and administrative manager. He was a nice guy but he didn't go into the players' dressing room, and so referees could not make any point to the players or manager via him. I think, as well, that the issue of who takes the team sheet to the referee involves the question of respecting each other. The Premier League should insist that it is the manager or assistant who brings in the team sheet.

Once you have the teams, you check the colours and decide what kit you will wear. We used to have three different shirts in our bag – a black one, a green and a yellow. I preferred the black (because it helped me look slimmer!) and I loathed the yellow one. In fact, I only wore yellow once. If you have a yellow car, the insurance premium is lower because it is so highly visible that other vehicles are unlikely to drive into it. A yellow shirt on a referee makes him too visible. When you look at the pitch from the stand, your eye is drawn to the bright yellow ref, but the ref should merge into the background and only emerge when he has to take some action.

Refs had twenty-five minutes to put on their kit and needed all that time once we became professional, because of the microphones, earpieces, heart monitors and so on. The heart monitor was introduced in the year 2000. It was on a strap which the ref put around his chest. The monitor fed information to a special wrist watch which the ref could look at during the game and from which data was downloaded later for Matt Weston, the Premier League's fitness expert.
By looking at how the heart performed during a game, Matt could devise training programmes which replicated the physical demands of a match.

The microphones and ear pieces were connected to a battery pack which was on a neoprene strap which went around the waste. I am not entirely sure the mikes and earpieces were a good idea. Before we got the mikes, I had always gone and talked to an assistant or a fourth official when I had needed to anyway. If an assistant wanted me, he got me. Introducing the communications system changed the dynamic of the way people refereed, because they were talking to assistants and the fourth official more than they needed to. Sometimes being miked up inhibited the banter between the referee and players. That banter was part of a referee's management technique, but players were sometimes wary of saying much once the mikes were introduced.

Another piece of kit a ref had to put on was an armband which vibrated when an assistant pressed a button on the handle of his flag. The idea behind that was that the assistant pressed the button when he raised his flag for a foul or offside – or pressed the button if the ref did not respond to his raised flag. So referees had so many straps and wires to put on before a match there was no time to sit about. I always found that the time flew by.

I would put the players' numbers in my notebook and then I was ready, half an hour before kick-off, to go out onto the pitch to warm-up. I had a set, fixed routine which lasted eighteen minutes. As well as working all the appropriate muscles, the routine was part of my process of focusing on the job ahead.

In the years in which I was professional, I was completely calm in the final moments before a match. There were no
nerves – not because I was professional but because of the years of experience I had banked. Some referees like to pump themselves up. The match ball was usually in the ref's dressing room when he arrived for the match and some got ready for the game by repeatedly bouncing the ball up and down. Some said things to psyche themselves up. I was the opposite. My mantra before and during the game was, ‘Cool, calm, collected'. And the other ‘c' was ‘concentrate'. I knew that, during a game, if I was watching a throw-in and someone in the crowd behind the player started to do something noticeable, I needed to ignore the fan and focus completely on the football.

After finishing the warm up, we'd return to the dressing room with twelve minutes to go before kick-off and I would give a few last words of encouragement to the assistants.

Then, in the tunnel before kick-off – once the assistants had finally persuaded the teams to come out, and they were invariably late – I would turn and face both teams and exchange a few smiles and nods. I wanted to appear completely at ease and in a good mood, so that the players knew I was confident.