Please Observe Our Looks Of Disdain

Back in the 2000s, I was a soccer referee. One year, there were several of us from the same club who travelled to one of the biggest kids’ tournaments in the world to officiate matches over a period of days.

One of our members had suffered a stroke some years earlier. Luckily, he had made it through; he was in fine physical health and his brain also worked fine. His speech centre had taken a hit, though, making him speak very slowly and sounding a bit strange when he talked. That still didn’t make him a bad referee; he had passed all the tests and officiated matches on a regular basis, so doing so at this tournament shouldn’t be a problem.

At this tournament, there were observers as well as referees. These observers would watch matches and report back to the organizers on the quality of the referees. That way, the organizers could screen out the bad ones and let the best ones get the finals — kind of the same process as in professional soccer.

One day, our referee friend was officiating a match when the observer on site suddenly took it upon himself to walk onto the field, blow a whistle, and stop the match. Both the players and the referee seemed confused and ended up standing around the observer, trying to figure out what was happening. The coaches of both teams also wandered onto the pitch and approached the observer.

Coach #1: “What’s going on?”

Observer: “This referee is not fit to officiate the match.”

Coach #2: “Uh… why? The organizers sent him here, so he must be.”

Observer: “It’s clear that he is not fit. He can’t talk properly.”

The two coaches looked at each other and both shook their heads.

Coach #1: “Listen, pal, we’ve been playing for twenty minutes now, and he hasn’t made a single mistake. You, on the other hand, have: observers are only here to observe and report. You do not have the authority to stop the match.”

Coach #2: “We’ll be reporting this to the organizers after the match.”

It turned out that both coaches were actually referees in Division 2, the third-highest level in the country. The observer was dismissed from the tournament and sent home, while our referee friend kept getting matches.