Publisher's Synopsis
Roy Entwistle is one of the country's oldest active football referees. He's seen it all, knows all the tricks amateurs and professionals pull and has penned this tribute to amateur refs up and down the country. Today's Premiership referees are under more pressure than ever. So many camera angles, so many decisions, so little time. But at least the men in the middle at the highest level have linesmen, stewards and a phalanx of police to hold back the baying supporters, irate managers and livid players - at grassroots level the referee is isolated, subject to the whims of the angry centre-half and the dirty striker. As Sports Columnist Martin Kelner put it: "if you manage to stop the youngsters kicking lumps out of one another, or pulling one another's jerseys in a style learned from Match Of The Day, you have the parents to contend with. A dozen or so fathers on the touchline seeking vicarous glory, is not an easy crowd". Roy Entwistle, for 30 years a referee in Manchester and Cheshire's Amateur Leagues, has been there, done that and booked the defender.;Now he reveals the secrets of the dark art of refereeing, the pressures affecting referees at all levels of the game and the antics of players, supporters and managers all of whom believe that they know best. He also discusses the problematic shortage of referees at grassroots level, recommends improvements and colourfully illustrates the dubious characters attracted to refereeing as a result. In his time Roy has been harangued by Sir Bobby Charlton and was once forced to dismiss ex-United manager Wilf McGuinness from the touchline for attempting to strangle a rival supporter! Little wonder then that out on the pitch, amid the maelstrom of claim and counterclaim, threat and retaliation, that the referee could be heard to yell: 'I'm not God...I'm just a referee'.
