A Tired Howard Webb

I liked today. Today was a good day. For the first time in a long time I was genuinely, 100%, perfectly looking forward to refereeing. A cup match between top of Division 3 and mid-table of Division 4. On paper, a mismatch that deserved a mammoth scoreline to the obvious. In professional terms, this match was your Manchester United vs Leicester City. Arsenal vs Watford. England vs Japan... Sorry...

I sensed an upset though. But before I could go and strut my stuff in black, I had to face another torturous night. A few years ago, I was classed as a human being. These days, I am more of an owl than a human being, just without the fully rotatable neck. Last night, I had told myself I was going to sleep at the nice, comfortable hour of 1am. What happened? I stayed awake, bloggling in here at the dirty and downright rude hour of 4am and despite saying I was going straight to bed, I didn't. I eventually made it to sleep at the break of dawn at around 6am. Even then, I ended up awakening at 20 minute intervals until I was fully woken up by a no doubt Polish man, 3 hours later, who seemed to take great pleasure in throwing a boulder at my wall. I was amused however, when I banged on the wall to tell Father Mitten to keep his DIY'ing quiet, only to find out I was abusing a complete stranger.

I would like to add that the foreigner, (not necessarily Polish), was laying down a carpet with a very, very noisy machine that sounded like it was sucking in the whole house, at an impossibly early hour for a temporary insomniac such as myself. After hearing the foreigner leave, I was happy enough. I could get a few hours kip before the big game, but Father Mitten had other ideas. He whipped out his power drill, (stop it!), and started drilling into my wall. However tired you are, you CANNOT sleep while in the middle of a warzone. It might aswell have been for the amount of noise that was being created...

So I gave up. I was going to have to officiate on a couple of hours kip, and all of a sudden, I was nervous again. My journey to the ground was a long one thanks to impossibly thick traffic, probably due to a health and safety hazard somewhere. As has been usual though, since my return to the refereeing arena, the nerves settled in time for kick-off and the boost from the banana and Tropical Lucozade was enough to get my head on the game.

The game itself? A "barnstormer"! And I'd just like to point out at this moment in time, that I was amazing. Sorry, but it's true. I might have still been asleep for the first 5 minutes, running around like a sleepwalker, but otherwise I was absolutely spot on, and the players knew it aswell. They were saying that I was the best referee they've had all season, and rightly so. It was a classic cup tie, end to end, with strong tackles and a couple of what the BBC commentary team like to call, "handbags", but thanks to my immense man management skills, I succeeded entirely. The 90th minute decision, to send the defender off for 'DOGSO', and the close decision to award a free kick instead of the penalty that everyone was up in arms for, was perfect. It went all the way to the wire, and the better-placed team won on penalties. Always a harsh way to finish a football match in my opinion.

I might suggest a law change to FIFA, where the players contest a game of Musical Chairs to decide the winner of a football match. It's about as tense as a penalty shoot-out, but it provides the one thing that a shoot-out cannot. A sing along!

Ok, maybe not...

Given I only had 2 hours sleep, plus an end-to-end 120-minute cup tie making my legs ache to an unsubstantiated level, most of you must be thinking I should be out cold by now. Well, you're wrong. I attempted to go to sleep at around 10pm, but after laying awake for 2 and a half hours, I decided to give up entirely. It's now 01.38, and I have another, no doubt, action-packed game to officiate in tomorrow afternoon. After last weeks calamities, I have no game to play in the morning, however. Phew. I fear also, I may be developing a fatal case of man flu in time for my run of 4 games in 6 days, (it was 5 in 7 before today), and if this insomnia carries on much longer, I'm in trouble.

But, seeing as I'm in the middle of a mini-high at the moment, I shall not worry about such things. And, let's be honest, I dont get many highs at all, even if they are mini!