There are 23 games of football going on at Hackney Marshes this morning and around the same number will be kicking off this afternoon. There are big, wardrobe lads; there are wiry, ironing board lads; there are stocky, tumble dryer lads. There are all the languages, all the races, all the religions. Tracksuits on, boot bags in hand, they walk past the cafe, into the foyer and over to the fixtures table to find out what pitch they are on today.

They’re thinking about their performance last week, about who they have this morning, about how they’re going to make an impact in the first five minutes. Without them, there would be no football at all. No screamers, no crossfield passes, no last-ditch tackles. No free-kicks, no corners, no sendings off. Without the referees, there’d be chaos.

You might think they’re all mad. That, to get up every Sunday morning, whack on the uniform, pummel some breakfast down and leg it to a park to get screeched at by a yappy centre-forward who’s already livid because he forgot to put his favourite socks on the radiator, they must be mad. And maybe they are mad, but only in the sense that you are too. That you love football.

Jermaine Wright, the main man in the middle. Photograph: Alan Bond

Jermaine Wright from Tottenham is 43 and has been an essential part of Hackney Marshes for 20 years. Someone asked him to come down and play for their team and he hasn’t left since. As the referee and fixture secretary for the Hackney and Leyton area, Jermaine is integral to football happening on the Marshes. He is a phenomenally committed, generous and knowledgeable man. The wisdom and the respect he shares with his referees is stonewall.

His first game refereeing, though, was at a park in the middle of nowhere. He remembers it well. “I forgot my cards! It’s great when you ref somewhere like the Marshes and there’s so many referees there looking out for each other, but not so great when you’ve got nobody there to support you. Anyway, someone head-butted someone and because it was my first game and I didn’t have my book, I just didn’t know what to do. I umm’d and ahh’d and eventually just had a word with him. I’m not a nervous person at all and I really enjoyed my first game, but that was that – I let someone get away with a head-butt.”



Jermaine, like every other referee I speak to, genuinely loves football. They would not be here otherwise. There’s an idea that referees like to be centre stage. That they want their name etched into the minds of fans, pundits and players. It’s not true. “You have to enjoy the game to be a referee”, says Jermaine. “If you don’t, you won’t be talking to the players, you won’t be keeping up with play, you won’t be remaining impartial. There’d be no point.”

Emmanuel. Photograph: Alan Bond

Emmanuel, 21, from Herne Hill, has only been refereeing for three months. He says you have to be a football fan to do it. “You wouldn’t be able to otherwise. That emotion you have whilst playing a game, well you still have it, you still feel it. You understand the players’ passion. And just like the players, as the gears of the game change, you gain momentum as an official. You have to.”

Jordan Dixon-Walker didn’t know about the Marshes before he moved to London from Peterborough. He loves the social aspect, being involved in football and seeing different types of players playing different types of games. Kwesi Burborey is the same. He’s going to Swansea Uni next year to study Sports Science and loves it. “I get paid to run around and be involved in football.” He’ll be reffing in muddy Wales next year, no danger.

Stephen has lived in London for six or seven years since moving down from Wolverhampton and still has a season ticket at the Molineux. He enjoys that notion of letting the game play out and the rewards of being actively involved in football. “I like the responsibility and the pressure – even at Sunday League level the game means a lot to the players – it’s what makes it difficult, but I really enjoy it. It’s great when you feel like you’ve spoken to a player and actively changed the way they’re behaving, stopping them getting into trouble. Just last week it happened and a player shook my hand afterwards and said ‘thanks for stopping me there.’”

Kwesi Burborey hopes to keep refereeing when he moves to Swansea to go to university. Photograph: Alan Bond

All of the guys at the Marshes were hooked on refereeing from their first game. Lanray Alapafujah, however, was gripped even before he went out into the middle for the first time. He was sucked in 15 years ago when he stumbled across a particular book. “A couple of my friends were doing things they shouldn’t be doing to earn money and I thought there must be something else out there – and I came across David Elleray’s Man in the Middle. I was captivated. It fully got my attention. I loved it from the first paragraph until the end – so, yeah, David Elleray got me into refereeing.”

Lanray’s fondest memory, the rascal, is sending off his brother in a cup final. “I sent him off! He kicked a player while on a yellow card, and I brought him over and called him by his name. Everyone said: ‘Ah ref, you know him now do you then, eh?’ and I said: ‘I do know him, that’s my brother.’ They kept having a word with me saying: ‘You can’t do that! That’s your brother.’ But I had to. And the funny thing is he’s a ref now!”

Obi Bentley used to be a reserve goalie at Crystal Palace. Injury set in, so he became a ref. “My perception of the game is that there’s a lot of testosterone out there and it is your job to keep it all intact,” he says. “When you get on the field, you put a smile on your face, you have a chinwag with the players and you communicate how you’d want to be communicated with. Rather than speaking to a player like I’m the police or in a uniform, I talk to them as you should. And in that way, you’ll walk over the white line at the end of a game with a mutual respect.”

Lanray Alapafujah, the referee who sent off his brother in a cup final. Photograph: Alan Bond

Jacob Miller is on the refereeing promotional scheme and hopes to go up the levels. “The chance to be involved in the Premier League and professional football would be amazing, but the media scrutiny is something I’d find difficult to deal with. It’d be really, really difficult. I can’t even imagine it.” It’s bad, isn’t it? This young lad with aspirations is put off climbing his working ladder because of stick he’d take from TV studios, newspapers and the internet.

Nathan, who used to play for Charlton, enjoys the buzz. “It’s a lot of fun if you can handle it. A lot of players see me and think I’m too stocky to run. But if the players dish out the banter, I’ll say something silly to them and we’ll just get on with the game. As long as it doesn’t get too serious, I just let them get on with it. I still want to push up the system; it’s just timing. I’m a primary school teacher in Tottenham as well and I’ve got kids too. It takes patience and resilience to do this. I say to the guys when they start acting up that even my kids at primary school aren’t as bad as this.”

Jermaine says more and more players are turning up to football in a bad mood, frustrated by something else in their life. Julius, who started refereeing in Hackney more than 30 years ago, agrees. “Players bring their outside influences and pressures on to the pitch with them. They think that rectangle area is in solitude and away from the law. I’ve refereed games where players don’t realise that, of course, they’re still breaking the law and – to make it worse – with a load of witnesses. That small element is more frequent now than when I started.”



Moraru Gica on the Marshes. Photograph: Alan Bond

All of us see those four white lines as a break from the norm. A removal from the banality of walking to the bus, getting on the bus, walking to work, sitting down, looking at a screen of pixels, deciding on a sandwich you don’t really want, opening the 14th sheet on Excel, saying “see you tomorrow”, walking to the bus, getting on the bus and sitting down at home. And that’s why we love it so much: we can do mad stuff in that rectangle: kick things, run fast, scream at mates, summon absolute glory from nowhere. But there’s still an aspect of responsibility we need to remember. There’s no difference between head-butting someone on the edge of the six-yard box and head-butting someone on the edge of the bar in town.

When asked about the worst part of refereeing, rather than talking about the abuse, they all say it’s having to abandon a game. “It’s horrible when spectators come on and there’s a big fight,” says Julius. “One team recently came prepared, all tooled up. And as soon one incident occurred, there were about 50 of them on the pitch. It was absolutely horrible. Three players had to leave in ambulances.”

Julius is beautifully articulate; he talks about the game with the experience of someone who’s been doing it for three decades and as someone who still thoroughly enjoys refereeing. He, like all the referees here, is in love with football. Like you, like me. They’ll be back next week, same boots, same position, different pitch. Smelling of grass and mud. They’ll be back thanks to the refs: the men in black, giving us their Sunday service.

• This article appeared first in MUNDIAL magazine

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