I believe they're asked to do this only if a club puts in a report saying they were totally useless, and then not every time.
whos the worst ref u have ever seen ?the bloke from orpington springs to mind seen him at 3 different grounds and he got booed off at all 3
It's the law of supply and demand. If ten times as many football supporters trained as refs the standard at the top would gradually rise. It's not hard to get started, you would have to be dumb, deaf and blind to fail the entry level exam. They are desperate to enrol you. After that, it's up to you. I refereed at the lowest level for a decade. I was bloody clueless, but I didn't do it out of a sense of power or superiority. I did it because I was shamed into it by the number of times when running junior teams there were no independent refs available at all and we had to press a parent or supporter to reluctantly officiate otherwise the game would have been called off. However bad I was, I was always more welcome than no ref at all. My method was to keep up with play (I was very good at that, at least) and mind my own business, basically letting the players decide amongst themselves whether the ball was over the line or it was a foul and only stepping in if they didn't. It worked surprisingly well as the worst I got was a few pitying looks. I was never abused physically or verbally. Most guys just wanted to go out and enjoy their weekend game and have a few pints afterwards, and kept things in proportion. An incompetent ref was just something to be suffered manfully in silence like a boil on their arse.
