Week 13

My request for late night games worked because two rescheduled games appeared for the week. I accepted both game offers and prepared for a bit of travel. The first game was Monday night at a local school. I had already been there a few weeks ago so I knew what to expect in terms of facilities.

Monday

I arrived at the school about 27 minutes before kick-off. I was rather annoyed at being three minutes past when I wanted to be there. To my utmost annoyance, the security guard at the entrance of the school didn’t permit me to enter through the entrance I did the last time. That meant I had to walk around the boundaries of the school. Arrival went from 27 minutes to 7 minutes before kick-off. I was clearly not happy

Week 7

Two early week high school cup matches were on the schedule.

U12 Boys Cup Quarterfinal

My pre-game travel arrangements were rather different this time. I was travelling in the away team bus. Again, I cannot stress the lack of referees meaning that both teams didn’t care. Had the field not been far and I been able to travel alone, I would definitely have picked that option but instead I got a first-hand experience of youth away team travel.

Before getting on the bus though and waiting for school to let out, I watched the younger school students playing European handball on the school court. The court was almost perfect for Futsal. My eyes gleamed at the prospect of introducing the sport and gave a short pitch to the Physical Education teachers on why they should introduce it.

First Game of 2014 Season

The anticipation for the first game is always high considering there is more than six months indoors.

I planned every element of the pre-game build-up. Having arrived back in the country a little more than 48 hours before kick-off, my first priority was re-aligning sleep schedule so that I was mentally prepared. The first night I had to sleep in three shift segments. I spent the day after watching the first day’s tournament games and was out for 5 hours. This helped me stay awake for the rest of the day but I was worn out by the time I got home and was out like a light.

I didn’t have my entire kit with me for the games; just my umbro and I co-ordinated with the rest of my crew to make sure they at least matched as assistants; they wore the 2014 kits. The majority of my referee stuff was in storage or out of town. More on that in the next post.

I had

Week 10 Match Incident

One of my match incidents from Week 10 Sunday deserves a post of its own because the argument rolls on and not to mention that it ruined my whole day.

Deliberately Handling the Ball

FIFA Letter & Freebies

I have a feeling this post will attract a lot of attention.

Why you ask?

Week 5

Run

I managed to try out the Interval testing feature on my Garmin and loved it. It was time-based since Satellite locating doesn’t work indoors so I ran the 30/40 interval with my training partner. It was, of course, exactly what I needed with the High Intensity test. Out of nowhere, a chest/throat infection showed up for me a few days earlier and I was recovering but it had been a while since my last training run that I decided to run nevertheless.

You can see my run stats here.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/434892961

Game #22

Coming off a weekend with some crazy rain, I was set to do, what could be, my final middle in the country. Here’s a snapshot of the travel on the way to the field. This was an out-of-town match so I left home 80 minutes before kick-off with my friend and crew member RM.

Week 38 & Game #21: Post-Game

So right now I am exhausted after a weekend of two quality games; a college game line and a mens game middle.

My games have been limited to weekends until Thanksgiving and an odd weekday game in October.

Game #21

Game #7

This game was interesting in nature. I had left the house a little over 2 hours before kick-off and enjoyed an hour long bus ride with my wheeled trolley bag to carry everything with me. I was to connect with a colleague DM in another city before we carpooled to the venue of the match appointment.

I spent the hour on the bus ride listening to the latest episode of the RefereesWorld podcast; June 2013. They are back after six months off! It was nice to hear my Canadian colleague’s question being answered on the podcast given that we spent so long discussing it; goalkeeper hanging off the crossbar kicking the ball away. I hadn’t fully finished the episode before I got to my destination and I spent a long while chatting on the 25-minute drive to the field on anything and everything since I hadn’t spoken with DM for a while. I also checked my phone again to re-affirm my homework on both the teams; the game had significant effect on the top spot of the league.

Game #6

So I just realised I happened to be recapping on even-numbered games (Game #2, Game #4…). Complete coincidence of course.

This game was a tough fixture and I was aware going in as the teams had a reputation of going at each other. I joined my colleague who was assigned with me as my Assistant Referee; this was the first time we were working together. We met an hour before kick-off and travelled to the field in Cambridge.