referential 2/petering out

Don’t give what you don’t see. Don’t guess. 

But, when your spider-sense is firing hard and you know that something bad definitely just happened, it’s hard not to just go with your gut. 

Game Two was petering out.

Nuthall (in blue) 5 Dovecrest (in yellow) 1. We all know which team are going to win. 

I often feel a bit sorry for the losing team at this moment: their ambitions clearly thwarted, their football persona emasculated. Even though I’m supposed to be neutral, I feel especially bad for any player who clearly doesn’t deserve to be on the losing team…

I’m discovering that when the game goes quiet like this, bad things can happen. When players are no longer really engaged in the game, they look for an outlet for their testosterone elsewhere.

With ten minutes left, Nuthall’s short and twitchy ferret-like right back and a Dovecrest’s doughy, ponytailed right midfielder got locked in an argument on the halfway line. Bugger.

From a distance, it looked like Class War. Nuthall’s Comrade Ferret clearly taking Umbridge at the bourgeois hairstyle of The Dovecrest Show Pony.

The fact that Dovecrest were sponsored by an Apple consultancy may have coloured my view. The Pony’s hair had Rapunzelled down his spine and he was claiming The Ferret was the culprit.

My Sunday mornings have become the act of separating grown men and deciding whether to side with: ‘he pulled my hair’ or ‘no, I didn’t’. 

They calmed down. Two minutes pass, three minutes remain. Out of the corner of my eye, I see The Pony recoiling from The Ferret and claiming: ‘He’s spat at me, he’s spat in my mouth. That’s disgusting, especially with Covid’.

I looked over at the exact point The Pony recoiled, so I didn’t see the moment when The Ferret directed a helpful cocktail of digestive enzymes towards his larger opponent.

I now have a decision to make. Damn. I hate having to make decisions, I just want to referee.

I called The Ferret over and asked him to look me in the eye so we could have a chat. The boy should never play poker: he was tell and overture. Perhaps he was aiming for the apple on his adversary’s chest?

The Ferret refused to make eye contact, repeating the stock defence: ‘I didn’t do nothing’ (I’m not sure he understood he was admitting guilt). 

While this was happening, The Pony trotted off to wash his mouth, muttered more about Covid and looked genuinely distressed. .

What could I do? What would you do? I didn’t see the spitting, so, ultimately, I couldn’t DO anything. I couldn’t send the player off. Thankfully, the coach removed The Ferret before he could make any more phlegm-based political statements.

In terms of learning, I should have kept an eye on those two after the first incident.

The spitting(?) happened at a goal kick – I should have scanned the pitch to see if they’d agreed that the Means of Production were a shared resource and that while the Bourgeois might need a buffer of capital to insulate them against fluctuations in labour supply, profit could probably be shared more equitably in pursuit of meritocracy. 

Anyway, the best team won, which is at least a bit meritocratic. And they gave me 100/100 for my performance. Top Marx!