The Referee

Well my season has been over now for a few weeks and its good chance to have a quick look back.  When I look back at the season I feel it was a bit of a lost season but when I look back properly it was really a roller coaster year.

If I look at the start of the year those opening months were great.  I was lucky enough to Referee in an FA Cup Qualifier, as well as do a live game on Setanta.  Thrown into that some County Appointments, and FA Cup 3rd Round Qualifier and a Trophy game and there is a lot to be happy about. 

However if I start to look back at the season from January onwards i feel it was a bit of a disaster.  I was lucky to be at Hinckley on New Years day.  However it all went wrong from then on, I injured my ankle and I put myself under pressure to get back in action.  I think looking back I may have come back to soon, It wasn’t until April that I was really running pain free on it, and this showed in my games. 

Going into the season I didnt feel at my sharpest, as i mentioned at the start of the season i had been traveling a lot and hadnt got the training in to give me a solid base.  I think i felt this all season and while I cant account for the ankle inuryI feel it was one of the worst for feeling niggles & muscle pulls.  With having 6 weeks out through the ankle, i felt that i never really regained full match fitness.

From a promotion point of view I was disappointed that i moved from a B Banding at the start of the season to an position of 73 out of 106 officials (Band E!).    However I wasn’t surprisedthat It had gone down from 56 in the mid season.    With losing Jan & Feb I never had a chance to crawl any marks back.  However on a positive note I finished 16th (Band A) out of 106 on Assessors marks so something must be going right.

The season is now in the past and I cant change what happened.  I think the way I will look back on it is focus and take motivation from the positives and learn from where i feel things went wrong.   I’mgoing to use the summer to get the ankle back to full strength and get the fitness back to where it should be.  Ive set myself some goals for the summer.   Next season i looking that it will have a different feel to it as there will be a new league in the East Midlands that will be a merger of some Senior League & Central Mids clubs.  Where im based I am prime positon to be moved across to this new league, so who knows what August will bring.