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Date: 26th February 2024
My colleague and our Operations Director, Alastair Blair, has been the driving force behind our 2024 campaign to encourage fans to become sreferee. A few years ago, Alastair researched, wrote and published a book on Scottish referees and Scotland’s impact on the development of the laws of the game. The first part of the book consists of interviews with referees from every level of the Scottish game, and these, in my view, demonstrate just what a great (albeit difficult) job our top referees have. Not only do they get (fairly) well paid, but they also get to see our greatest players close up – and they also experience some of the funniest incidents in the game that the fans never know about.
For example, the story that gives the book its title (“Stop the match, we’re going to arrest the goalkeeper”), came from a Grade 3 official, David Gray, who had vast experience running the line at the top level of Scottish football. On this occasion, it involved an Edinburgh derby…
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Just before half-time, David felt a tap on his shoulder and turned round to see a high-ranking policeman standing behind him. “Stop the game linesman!” was the command from this imposing figure, “we’re going to arrest the Hearts’ goalkeeper.”
As David says, there is nothing in the referee training book that prepares you for this sort of thing, so he pointed out that there were only a few minutes till half-time and wouldn’t it be better to wait till then, not to mention why did they want to arrest Henry anyway? “Because he’s been making V-signs behind his back to the Hibs fans and they are going nuts,” was the answer, but David’s argument that they wait till half-time prevailed and the policeman went with him to the referee’s changing room.
The referee was the very experienced Bob Valentine, who wasn’t easily intimidated. While he didn’t exactly say, “to what are we the indebted for the privilege of this visit?” he did interrupt the policeman’s spiel by pointing out that he didn’t know who he was, and therefore would he give him his name and rank, which he did. Bob, not unreasonably, then pointed out that if they had arrested Smith there might well have been a riot and said he would deal with the situation.
David was sent to the Hearts’ dressing room to fetch Smith and the Hearts manager. He knocked on the door, went in and told them both they were required by the referee. The Hearts’ manager had no idea what was going on and wasn’t best pleased to have his half-time talk interrupted but he had no choice. On the way there, he made his own enquiries, along the lines of, “Henry, what the **** have you been doing?” and when he arrived and saw the seniority of the policeman, he realised it was something serious. However, Bob Valentine took charge, telling Smith he was receiving a yellow card and that if he did the same in the second half then he would be in trouble. “No problem,” said Henry, “I won’t do it in the second half, because I’ve got the Hearts’ fans behind me.”
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There are a host of other entertaining stories in the book, some of which I’ll recount here in the next few weeks and months. I hope that they inspire at least a few of our SFSA members (we have over 80,000) to take up a whistle. As we’ve noted before, there is a shortage of referees in some areas of Scotland so we need more of you to get involved. Please do consider this – remember #norefnogame
Stuart Murphy,
CEO, SFSA
Posted in: Latest News, Refereeing