It’s a worryingly warm Sunday afternoon in early spring. If it wasn’t for the near horizontal angle of the sunbeams cutting across the perfectly mown grass of the Jubilee Grounds, in Catford, south east London, you’d think it was summer. Are we all doomed? Is global warming going to prematurely kill us all? I take a deep breath and look around at the 200-strong crowd gathered around me – are they thinking the same thing, I wonder?

“Ref!”

“Ref! Are you blind!”

“REEEEEEEFFF?!”

Hmm. Maybe not.

Because this crowd is actually here to watch SE Dons play local rivals Hatcham FC, in an amateur football match, and right now they aren’t worrying about the unusual weather. Instead, their entire focus – and outrage – is directed toward the referee who has just disallowed a goal for SE Dons, in what looks like a harsh decision.

Salvyn Kisitu, 22, an SE Dons centre-back, who also plays semi-professionally for Hythe Town, wears a plastic face mask that glints in the sun, is so incensed that he screams at the referee, trying to claim that he's biased against SE Dons. The SE Dons players on the pitch get caught up in the scrap, as do their furious fans and team members on the sidelines. The referee then shows Salvyn a yellow card, sending him off the field for 10 minutes which, predictably, doesn’t go down well.

“It happens to us every week!” says Salvyn as he storms off the field.