Seeing Red (32 page)

statistics gives me a sense of satisfaction because by the turn of the year I knew that my career was reaching its conclusion and yet my performances remained good enough for me to get some terrific fixtures and to finish my refereeing journey at Wembley.

A career in numbers. Here is a spreadsheet of all twenty-seven seasons which demonstrates how much time I gave to refereeing – because I loved it. My seventh season, 1986/87, when I became a Football League linesman, I was also refereeing in the Isthmian League and still doing Sunday matches. To clock up 81 games that season, I was doing as many as ten matches a month some of the time, while holding down a job. I only did two seasons in youth football, because there were too many abusive parents.

Look at the international matches, and how the number jumped in my penultimate season – because FIFA were preparing me for the World Cup.

In my last three seasons in the Premiership, the number of games I refereed in that competition increased substantially. I was not the only guy doing so many but it was certainly true that a few men were getting a lot of games. Most of mine were high-profile, potentially volatile matches and, because I refereed them honestly without fear, I had more than my share of controversies.