I have always felt sorry for referees. There they are out on the field for the most exciting game in the world, running around for 90 minutes and they never get a kick. A bit like being a eunuch in an old Turkish harem; so close to the action, yet never really part of it.


Sympathy is not the conventional emotion one is supposed to feel. Hatred, ridicule and contempt are more common -- the traditional feelings of football watchers and players towards officials who, folklore has it, are visually impaired, intellectually challenged and born out of wedlock. (In fact the customary English fans' chant "The referee's a bastard!" was undeniably true only once and that was when the 1878 FA Cup Final was presided over by a Mr. S. Bastard.)


It is perhaps predictable that an Englishman like myself should look upon referees kindly, since England's sole World Cup Final victory, in 1966, was achieved via the most famous bad decision in history. With the score at 2-2, Geoff Hurst hit the ball against the underside of the bar. It bounced down and then back into play. England players appealed for a goal, the referee was in doubt and he turned to the Russian linesman for guidance. The Russian claimed to see in a split second at a distance of some 40 meters a goal which 30 years of slow-motion replay analysis had failed to spot. It was a verdict which owed less, I suspect, to remarkable eyesight than the history of his country's relations with Germany.


Such examples are rare, probably because all referees have their eyesight regularly examined and tested for color-blindness. They also have to be very fit (a pedometer attached to a ref a few years ago clocked him at over 10 kilometers for a game). And this demanding work, except in Italy and parts of South America where referees are full-time, salaried employees of the league, is not well paid.


Such are the rewards. Consider then the perils of the job, the least of which is condescension and verbal niggling from players. In an England vs. Scotland match some years ago, a Hungarian ref became so tired of this that he could finally take it no longer. "You British!" he cried, "You think I know damn nothing about the game. Let me tell you! I know damn all!"


Then there is bad language, which can sometimes reach such heights of passion that it is just as well if the match is being refereed by an official who has only a slim grasp of the local language. A Frenchman, in charge of one of Aberdeen's European Cup ties once sent off a Scotsman and was then subjected to a stream of foul language. "I'm sorry," replied the ref, "Eez too late to apologize now."


My favorite swearing story concerns a player in the West of England called Mike Bagley who, when sent off for bad language (recorded in all its glory in the referee's notebook) attempted to destroy the evidence. Before leaving the field, he grabbed the notebook, tore out the relevant pages and ate them. He was subsequently banned for six weeks.


The abuse can be of a more personal nature and this, in an amateur league in Scotland, led in 1975 to the only occasion I know of a referee booking players before a match started. The team in question, Glencraig United, recognized the ref as one who had not looked upon them favorably when last he officiated at one of their games. This inspired them, while changing, to sing a song about him which was less than complimentary. He overheard, entered their dressing room and booked the entire side, plus both substitutes.


Lest anyone think this is a record, I commend to them the German referee who, in 1981, attempted to restore some control and order in a game by booking all 22 players. And when one of the linesmen intervened with an alternative suggestion, he booked him as well.


In some places, however, the dangers of refereeing extend to the life threatening. Only last week in an Argentine league match a fan was so outraged at an offside decision that he ran onto the pitch and felled the referee with his fists. And, in South America especially, cases of officials being shot (in several instances fatally) during or after a game are by no means unknown.


Strangely enough, for those who think such incidents are a modern phenomenon and confined to Latin countries, the most extraordinary incident of this kind occurred in Wales in 1912. The story says a lot, not only about the perils of refereeing, but also of the low esteem in which they are held.


The match was between Wattstown and Aberaman Athletic and ended in a narrow win for the latter side. Some minutes after the final whistle, a Wattstown player called Hansford, feeling that the referee's decisions had robbed his side of the draw they deserved, burst into his dressing room and killed him. The verdict handed down by the jury at Hansford's trial speaks volumes about what most people felt -- and still feel -- about referees. It was manslaughter.