Scottish FA Referee Development Blog

Assistant referee Charlie Smith blogs about his experience of Sunday’s Scottish Communities League Cup final between Celtic and Kilmarnock.

Cloud nine. That’s where I’ve been since receiving a call from the Scottish FA to inform me that I was to officiate as an assistant referee at the Scottish Communities League Cup final.

My week prior to the cup final has been busy.  

Monday was exam day for new entrants who are at the beginning of their refereeing journey, where I am one of the instructors.  This keeps me up to date with the changes to the laws of the game.

Tuesday I was officiating at Dundee v Ayr – the only problem was the fans were in but the lights did not come on!

On Wednesday, I was training and I received good wishes from many referees during a tough physical session.

Then on Thursday I took part in the extreme sport of shopping and because of my busy week I missed the chance to wish my son good luck for his trip to Ireland where he is competing for Scotland in gymnastic at the Celtic Cup

It was an early start for me on Friday. I was up at 5am to drop my wife and daughter at the airport then an early morning run followed by a one-hour walk with my dogs. The rest of the day was spent with my feet up watching the FA Cup games on TV.  The night was spent cooking and cleaning like most men who fear not being present on Mother’s day!  I then retired to bed early for the big day.

In the morning, I went down the stairs with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning but instead of a settee being laden with presents, there lay two snoring dogs.

This was the first cup final for William Collum, Stuart Stevenson and I with our fourth official Calum Murray who is a seasoned campaigner who understood the pressures we were under. 

At Hampden we had a light lunch then went over our pre-match discussion. This was led by the William who offered guidance and his expectations of the game.

We went out for our warm up and spent some time soaking up the atmosphere of the day.

We led both teams onto the park for the pre-match ceremony and walking out of the Hampden tunnel I felt ten feet tall, which is incredible due to being vertically challenged.

Every boy dreams of walking onto the hallowed turf of Hampden and I have now had the great privilege and honour of fulfilling this dream.

The game flew by with an electric atmosphere. There were many difficult decisions which had to be made but they were all handled in a professional manner by all match officials.

Reflecting on the game, I would put this down as the pinnacle achievement of my career and now my medal has pride of place in the family display cabinet. My family have supported me from my beginnings in junior football to the highs of this cup final and they enjoyed their day as much as I did.

Women’s referee Morag Pirie blogs about her last two days at the Algarve Cup in Portugal.

Day 15 – Wednesday

It was final day of matches today. My game kicked-off at 11am and I had the same referee team as the last match so we didn’t need to have as much of an in-depth discussion as we did in our previous game together. We had a good blether to the observer (Krys from Australia) on the way to the game about how football is run in her country. It is interesting to see differences.

We had a short discussion regarding pre-match requirements to confirm a few things. Eveline wanted us to talk a bit slower and use shorter words as she has to concentrate so much on listening to English during the match. We decided to use just key words during the game to avoid any confusion as we anticipated that the match would be quite fast paced. We began our warm-up with the temperature at over 20 degrees.

The game was very competitive with both teams wanting to just play football and I was happy to use as much advantage as possible. The players listened well to my instructions during the game and no cards were required. After the match, we had a chat with Krys and she was very happy with our performances and match control.

After my warm down and shower, I watched the second half of the final between Germany and Japan. It was 1-0 when I arrived but finished 2-2 with Japan equalising late on. The match was really exciting and Germany scored the winning goal in the last minute of extra time. Thrilling game.

We had a couple of hours until dinner and my friend Pernilla came up with an idea for something for tonight’s end of tournament party. All of the UEFA referees congregated in Pernilla’s room and she performed a dance routine with assistant referee flags – it was hilarious. We decided to have a final rehearsal later on before dinner.

After dinner, karaoke was arranged and Sonia from FIFA made some speeches to thank everyone for all their work. Before the karaoke started, the UEFA referees headed off to get sorted and we performed our routine to music with the flags. It was hard to keep a straight face during this, but it went down extremely well and was good fun. The rest of the night was really enjoyable and we all said our goodbyes before heading to bed.

Day 16 – Thursday

Breakfast at 7.30am and there are a few tired faces at the table after last night’s events. There are only around 10 of us leaving at 11am flight as the majority of the girls left at 3.30am for 6am flight!

After a couple connecting flights, I arrived in Aberdeen at 10.10pm. My sister picked me up from the airport and it is good to see a familiar face. I was deposited at my parent’s house with a small bag of shopping and headed off to bed following my 14 hours of travelling!

I am Back to work tomorrow morning at 9am and then have a game at the weekend.

The Algarve Cup was a fabulous experience for me with lots of fantastic memories. I learned so much out there. Hopefully I have done Scotland proud with my performances and hope to have put myself in contention for future FIFA competitions. Fingers crossed.

And finally, thanks for reading my blog and sharing this experience with me.

Day 13 – Monday

Today I was fourth official at Hungary v Wales with the Chinese girls. Our match wasn’t until 5pm at night and the Chinese girls wanted breakfast at 7.30am! OMG – I managed to persuade them to put it back until 8am so that I could have a wee bit of a long lie in.

After lunch, I went for a walk into town for an hour and then prepared for the match. I met with the Chinese girls and discovered that our physical fitness coach, Jean-Baptist, was coming with us, not as an observer, but just to watch the match and keep us company.

The match went well and my job as fourth official ran smoothly with the teams behaving as requested. I sorted out all my paperwork and we left the stadium to head back to the hotel for dinner and to return the equipment to the FIFA office. I met up with the rest of the girls at dinner and we discuss the day’s matches before bed.

Day 14 – Tuesday

We started the day with our normal, non-match day training session. The referees who had a match did a slightly different session to the rest of us as they needed more of a recovery session. We then looked at some match situations with the assistants mainly focussing on the offside rule. We finished off with some sprint shuttles and some core stability exercises.

After training I had a quick shower before myself and Abbie (from Singapore) are taken to the local dermatologist to find out about this skin rash. There are now seven girls with the same rash. Most are clearing up but mine is getting worse and has spread down and up my leg. The dermatologist listens to our situation and advised us that it’s a contact rash, perhaps from the material of our tracksuit bottoms and the chemicals on the material or the friction on hot tracksuit bottoms and not necessarily from massage oil. However, he sent us away with three prescriptions for cortisone cream which is enough cream for everyone.

After lunch, we had a de-briefing meeting with all the girls to go over the DVDs from yesterday’s matches. It was our last meeting before we go home. We discussed situations from all the matches and discover the top marks from all the tests from the first week, I was delighted to discover that I was in the top four on the first DVD video test and I won a yellow FIFA t-shirt – well chuffed! I also managed 100% in the English test but that doesn’t really count…

Finally, we were given the appointments for the final day of matches. I was delighted to hear I had been appointed to the 3rd versus 4th place match of Sweden v USA and had the same team of referees with me as I had for the last match I refereed. I was really happy for everyone. The final match is Japan v Germany and Margaret from USA is the referee which is a great appointment for her and everyone was really chuffed for her as she had a tough match in the previous round of games and did very well so it’s a good reward for her.

We then got changed and headed to a restaurant in a nearby town where we had a referee dinner to celebrate the tournament with the referee organisers, etc. We arrived back at the hotel at 11pm absolutely knackered and I was ready for my bed. We have an early game at 11am kick-off and will be leaving the hotel at 8.15am so I need my sleep for the day ahead.

Day 11 – Saturday

This morning we had a treasure hunt around a short area of the town. We had clues to find that were stuck to things like park benches, lamp posts, walls, etc and answer riddles and questions. It was a fun way to spend the morning instead of training. We then went to the swimming pool for a wee bit. The indoor pool was fine and we did some aqua aerobics but the outdoor one was freezing cold! I lasted only about five minutes and only managed eight laps – it was just too chilly!

In the afternoon, we had a couple of hours free time so a few of us had a wander into the local town to a small Saturday market where they sell fish, fruit and nuts. I picked up some postcards to send back home.

Later, we had a meeting where we viewed a total of 39 clips with situations from our matches, which lasted 2 and a half hours! It was good to see the incidents from our games with points for improvement or positive points to be applauded or some situations to discuss.

After dinner, we had a more detailed match de-briefing with our observer. It was all very constructive and positive and she was very happy with our performances and team work which was good to hear. She had a couple of points to make about our positioning during open play which we will work on.

We have a “weigh-in” tomorrow morning before breakfast and then we go to training. We find out after breakfast the appointments for Monday as that will have an impact on who does what kind of training session.

I am accosted by the physio staff regarding my inflamed and blotchy legs. There are five other Asian girls who also seem to have a rash after the massages and they are confused as I am the only European person to be affected. They think it might be the food but I am eating similar food to normal whereas the Asian girls are not.

I am fine but have itchy legs and I am trying my best not to scratch! Thankfully, I have been in shorts for most of the time I have been here so I don’t have trousers to rub against them or irritate my legs.

Day 12 – Sunday

I arrived for the “weigh in” to discover that it has been cancelled. There were supposed to be scales delivered by the hotel staff but they didn’t arrive so we don’t have any weigh in today.

We head to training and on arrival we are given the appointments for tomorrow’s matches.

I am fourth official at the match Wales v Hungary which is the deciding match for Group C as Wales have four points and Hungary have three points. The other officials are from China and their English isn’t the best so I’m not expecting much chat after the game! We also are the only match that doesn’t have a referee observer. There are six matches in five different stadiums so there are not enough observers to go round. I have been entrusted to deal with everything as fourth official.

It was then back to the hotel for a quick shower and lunch and then all the referees headed to a local nature park. To be honest, there was very little nature to see – a broken boat, an old water mill, some birds in a pond, marshland and reeds. After a quick wander around the town we headed into Faro town centre for a bit of shopping! A couple of us found some sports stores and bought some things before we went back to the hotel for dinner.

At dinner, Sonia Denacourt (Head of FIFA Referees) came to our table to ask if we are ready for our matches, I asked if she had any good words in Chinese! She laughed and said that they have a lot of faith in me to ensure that all goes well with the three Chinese officials. After dinner, I collected the fourth official board, buzzer flags, match sheets and polar watches for tomorrow’s games. I headed back to my room to charge up the equipment and check it all worked. I then watched some football highlights before bed.

Day 9 – Thursday

This morning we had training at 9am as usual.  It was a fairly short training session where those who had a game the day before did some light recovery jogging and stretching and the rest of us who were fourth officials or who didn’t have a game did some exercises with the assistants where we went over some fast feet over cones. We finished training just in time before the rain started – and boy did it chuck it down.  I was just grateful that I didn’t leave any washing out on my balcony as it would have been soaked by the time I got back to the hotel!

Since we got back after training early and had two hours to kill, I decided to go for a swim, jacuzzi and spent some time in the steam room. It felt great to relax the legs.

After lunch, we were given our appointments for tomorrow’s matches.

I am referee on the match Iceland v Sweden with my Sian Massey from England and Eveline Bollie from Switzerland as my assistant referees. The fourth official for the match is Nami Sato from Japan.

It should be a good game so I am looking forward to it. All of the assistants speak English and we all get on really well which is a plus.

I had a massage booked for the afternoon to ensure that my legs are in fine form for tomorrow.  We then had a meeting at 4.30pm where went over video clips from all six matches from yesterday and discussed various situations like positioning so that everyone can learn from their previous matches.

After dinner, my team and I had a meeting to go over our pre-match discussion so that all of us are clear as to our duties for tomorrow’s match and make sure that we get everything right.  I then made sure that my communication kit was well charged and ready for the match. I don’t want the batteries running out on me!

Day 10 – Friday

Match day today so we had a long lie and a late breakfast for once!  We left at 11.15am as our match was a 1.30pm kick-off.  I took some time in the morning to chill out and decided to write out some of the training sessions that we have been doing here to give to my association trainer. He is interested in what we are doing and he may implement some of the drills that we have been doing into our training back home.

The match was played at a fast pace for the first half and slowed down a bit for the second half.  Sian Massey and myself spoke a lot on the communications kit as we are both quite used to using it back home. However, our other assistant wasn’t so vocal but we keep each other right during the match.

After our match, we travelled to another stadium to watch the last half hour of the Portugal v Hungary match and met some of the other officials there.

It was back to the hotel after the football for dinner and some chilling out with some of the girls. We played some card games to relax.  I had a massage after dinner. Shortly afterwards, I discovered that I am actually allergic to the massage oil! My thighs went bright red, blotchy and itchy!  I then had a shower to remove the oil and used some anti-histamine cream to reduce the swelling. Ouch!

Morag Pirie learns of her first match at the Algarve Cup in the next instalment of her blog from Portugal…

Day 7 – Tuesday

Today we learned what matches we had been appointed to and I’m fourth official at Portugal v Wales match. It is being televised live on Portugese TV, so “nae pressure” at all. My friend Pernilla Larsson from Sweden is the referee and Angela from Cyprus (who I worked with in Italy last year) and Sonia from Croatia are on the match, so we all speak pretty good English, so should all be ok. Fingers crossed the game goes well for us all.

I pottered about in the afternoon for an hour or so and then had a short chat with our psychologist. She had a couple of suggestions for me and I will look to give them a try going into this match.

At 4pm, we had our last meeting session before the matches start. We were given details of the tournament rules and regulations. After that, we were given a presentation by the fitness instructors regarding the fitness test results and details of what you should be doing training wise which was interesting and informative. Thankfully, I have been doing the right amount of training so it was good to hear some nice feedback.

We then reviewed the DVD of the match incident test from yesterday and went over the answers to the clips to check that everyone understood the referee decisions that were expected by FIFA in various situations. There were a couple of clips which took the group by surprise but we agreed on most things on the whole. I then had to go and collect my fourth official boards and buzzer flags for the match tomorrow.

The girls who failed the fitness test will leave tomorrow morning first thing as they will not take part in any of the matches, so there were a few goodbyes to be said and then it was off to bed.

Day 8 – Wednesday

Today was the first match day and I was fourth official at the match of Portugal v Wales which was being televised. The referee was my friend Pernilla Larsson from Sweden, with Angela from Cyprus and Sonia from Croatia as assistants.

I didn’t have training today as I have a match so breakfast was later than normal. I went to see off a couple of the girls who were leaving this morning after failing the fitness test a few days ago. It was sad to see them go, but I am sure that they will work harder on their fitness and will be back another day better and stronger. Those girls who don’t have any matches today have training as usual, so we didn’t see them at breakfast.

Our referee team for the Portugal v Wales match congregated after breakfast and we had our pre-match discussion. The referee discussed her requirements from each member of the team and how we would deal with various situations using the communications system and buzzer flags.

The rest of the morning is free, so I took the time to look at the FIFA website and view some of the training material and other information that has been posted there for our benefit.

We arrived at the stadium in the afternoon just as the first match of the day is almost finished. It was Japan v Norway and there were over 50 photographers and camera crew from Japan to relay the match back home. For our match however, there were a couple of cameras and around 20 photographers. There was not a huge amount of spectators, perhaps a couple of hundred.

The match went ahead with very little problems, a caution early on in the first half which set the scene for all players and no other sanctions were required during the game. We did a lot of talking to each other during the game and ensured that the correct decisions were given during the match by everyone. The match was fairly evenly matched with both teams having a selection of shots on goal, but no-one managing to score. A minimum of 3 minutes of added time were to be played, and in the second of these minutes, Wales scored the only goal of the game.

We had planned on going to watch another game that had started later than our match. However, we were advised that unfortunately, by the time we got to the other match, it would be pretty much finished, so we just headed back to the hotel instead where we and had dinner and chatted about all the matches with the other girls. I then went to my room to watch some telly & chill out.

I really enjoyed my first match and went to bed looking forward to the rest of the tournament.

Women’s referee Morag Pirie continues her blog from day 5 of her time at the Algarve Cup in Portugal…

Day 5 – Sunday

In anticipation of another day’s training, we were hoping for a lighter intensity training session as we have a fitness test tomorrow. We were not disappointed. We had a warm up with some interesting exercises and group communication to ensure that we worked together during the warm up.

After this, we split into sections of referees and assistant referees. As referees, we walked through various set pieces and looked at where our positioning should be for differing positions of the ball and thinking of what players might do. In particular, we were looking at free kicks around the penalty area and also goal kicks. It was interesting to hear of some tactics that other international teams take for set pieces and what to be aware of, some tricks that we don’t have within UEFA that are prevalent in other continents. Hopefully, these hints come in useful for the coming matches in the tournament.

On returning to the hotel we had an early meeting at 2pm, where we reviewed the remainder of the previous day’s DVD match situation test, and were then given another DVD video test to reinforce the logic and to try and maintain consistency of decisions throughout the whole group. We were then given a short talk from a psychologist regarding the fitness test that lay ahead. Her main message was to be positive in your approach and you will have a better chance of success than if you are in a negative mind frame. Here’s hoping that her words of wisdom work!

We were then given a run through of our fitness rest timings and everyone was feeling a bit apprehensive. It’s a huge thing for all of us as it is out first FIFA fitness test conducted by FIFA officials. You realise that this is about as big as it gets with big tournaments like the Olympics and the U20/U17 World Cups happening this year with all of us in the mix for being able to officiate at these tournaments. Your future is determined by being able to pass the fitness test so if you aren’t fit enough, you won’t get any further! No pressure then…

In the afternoon we headed off to watch a local Portugese First Division match between SC Olhanese and Gil Vicente.

It is interesting to see the differing styles of play from other countries. They play a lot of long balls, and players seem to make a lot more out of challenges that they would back home. The match is entertaining and interesting but finishes 0-0 despite a penalty being saved and a player being sent off. On looking at the standard of the match and players ability, it feels similar to the Highland League matches that I referee back home.

It was off to bed early in preparation for an early start tomorrow – I can’t believe that I have to get up so early for breakfast at 6.30am and leave the hotel by 7.30am! The things I do for football… Normally, my alarm hasn’t even gone off by this time!

Day 6 – Monday

Well, today has been a busy one with a 6.30am for breakfast – it was still dark outside! The referees left at 7.30am to head to the athletics stadium of Faro. We started our warm up at 8am with some of the girls wearing thermal tops and gloves to keep warm. It was actually quite chilly first thing but by the time we had done our warm up, it was getting warmer. We all did the sprints and 10 laps. I did a practice of the old men’s fitness test the previous week at Association training back in Aberdeen so knew that I would be ok for the laps. My group stuck together as a group of 5 (with 13 of us in total – 3 groups running together) with myself and another girl at the front of our group keeping everyone together and not running ahead of the rest following on behind. We kept checking that we were not going too fast or too slow and making sure that everyone in the group got in on time before the whistle went. On lap 8, there was a technical problem and the sound system started playing the assistant’s test part of the way through our laps. Fortunately Tracey (a fitness coach) was also keeping the timings on her watch so we had to ignore the whistle on the tannoy system and only concentrate on her watch. Listening to lots of whistles was a bit tricky especially when trying to concentrate on your running. Thankfully, all the referees got through the test without any problems.

We then stayed around to offer encouragement and to watch all the assistants do their tests. The first group of assistants from Asia and South America did well. Then the UEFA assistants and a couple from South America were last to run at 11.am. The sun was now a lot hotter and also a wind had picked up that wasn’t there before. Some of the assistants in this group didn’t pass the sprints; three were not fast enough and one hurt her hamstring on the fifth sprint and therefore they failed the fitness test. These girls were obviously upset and unsure how this will affect their future within FIFA.

After the fitness test we had lunch and then I decided to lay outside in the sun by the pool for a short while to relax and listen to some tunes. I wanted to take the opportunity to enjoy the sunshine as I don’t think there will be much sunshine back home in Aberdeen in February!

We had a a bit of time before dinner so I took the opportunity to test my communication kit with my two assistants Sian Massey from England and Eveline Bolli from Switzerland. It was interesting as the communication kit is different to the one I use at home, with different ear pieces. We tried to talk to each other from different areas of the hotel and realised very quickly that it doesn’t work through walls as the signal doesn’t get through. Thankfully, there are no walls in a football pitch, so we should be OK for our first match!

After this, we were given a presentation by Sonia Denacourt (Head of FIFA Referee Department) on how to deal with the media and various situations that you may find yourself in, which was really informative. It’s good that FIFA control the environment where the media are located at matches to ensure the referee are protected as much as possible.

After dinner, we had a “film night” where we watched a film called “The History of Women’s Football” which showed how women’s football has grown and developed in the last 20 years from the first ever World Cup up until last year’s 2011 World Cup. It was really interesting to see the changes that have taken place.

We find out tomorrow who has matches for Wednesday as no appointments have yet been advised. I am excited to see what happens!