Have a Word, Ref!

Welcome to Sunday League football: a world where the grace and athleticism of the Premiership are replaced by a fat bloke with the turning circle of an Abramovic oil tanker, sent off for a two-footed challenge and a kidney punch for good measure. Here, for the first time, are the very best, and worst, Sunday League referees' report cards. 'Ave it! In Sunday League, the same characters appear with astonishing frequency: every side has its 'joker', or barrack-room lawyer, or veteran who insists each season is his last; the Fancy Dan, the rotund, balding midfielder, and the fat keeper. But there are few more bizarre creatures than the Sunday League referee. Picture, if you will, the lonely custodian in a bobble hat and tracksuit bottoms, stripping-off into his fading black uniform. Who in their right mind, would volunteer to have 22 hulks shouting "Have a word, ref!" for the full 90 minutes (plus injury time? The portrait of a shivering, balding official embodies the very essence of this peculiarly British phenomenon, a game that is played on the parklands of Great Britain, come rain or snow, each week by over 1 million people, and refereed by over 2,000 men in black.
In "Have a Word, Ref!", we have collected the very best of these reports together for the first time, documenting some of the most outrageous and amusing incidents from the great game: from the player who threw his false leg at the referee after he was sent-off to the disgruntled team captain who drove his transit van on to the field of play and chased the referee across a field before crashing his van into a ditch. Fully integrated, with a foreword by Capital Radio's Johnny Vaughan, this is a book about fat blokes who believe they can play like Wayne Rooney (a fat bloke who really can play a bit) but who, more often than not end up being sent off like Wayne Rooney (for a two-footed lunge over the top of the ball combined with a sharp blow to the kidneys).