30 Days of Me. Um. Yay? Day 9... Something I'm proud of in the past few days

I was kind of stuck on what to write about in this slot for the last few days. It had been a largely uneventful week, discounting my latest romantic interest that I'm not prepared to blog about just yet. Fortunately, Saturday night gave me some pretty good material!

On Saturday night, the Canterbury Sunday Soccer League held their annual awards night and dinner. I was dutifully invited by the President of the League, Shannon Gilmore to attend because I had been nominated for an award. I was pretty stoked about this because I've trained extremely hard in the last eighteen months. I've worked hard on my foul recognition, I've trained hard to get fitter and faster.

So I got dressed up: I put on my finest threads in order to impress my New Love Interest (NLI), the players and generally feel good about myself! I enjoy putting on cufflinks and a tie. And, in holding with the refereeing theme, I put on my favourite tie:

The referee is the Boss!

Once NLI and I had arrived at the glorious venue, the Prebbleton Tavern, we realised a couple of things:

1. The dress code was much, much more casual than I had expected. Jeans were de rigeur, t-shirts topped dress shirts and I dare say that I was the only one wearing cuff links on the night.
2. I was the only referee who had been invited. This lead me to believe that I might well have be the winner of the trophy...

Wayne Stapley, the Mainland Referee Development Officer, and his wife turned up. We chatted for a while leaning over a covered pool table - mainly discussing the earthquake; it had been a while since we had last talked. The whistles were wetted by pleasant, heavily-discounted (which made them even more pleasant) drinks, and the conversation flowed merrily between the four of us. This was interrupted by the dinner gong, and our ravenous party queued up for a remarkably delicious roast dinner with salads. Remarkable because it was just so darned tasty! I had to refrain from filling up the plate like some of the younger players did; Wayne assumed these ones were students. Good to see the old stereotypes are lasting well! Pavlova and fruit salad ensued. We dug into our desserts with vigour. Clearly the Sunday League was trying to bribe us with these offerings. I nearly fell for it, but I am more cunning than a pavlova. More cunning than all the tins of fruit salad in Lichtenstein. Then the awards started.

I forgot there were five divisions of Sunday League. Five listings of the final tables for each division. Five captain's speeches. Five teams that went up to the front and were awarded medals one-by-one as the captain read out their names. Five trophies to be handed out. It was a little laborious. Maybe it was just me with my nerves building? But then the moment came: the announcement of Referee of the Year. I was quite chuffed with myself, it's always a buzz hearing your name read out when you win a prize of any sorts, and this one was especially awesome because the teams had voted for me. So I went up and they asked me to speak... so I did!

I hadn't really thought about it, but I was determined to make a point about the treatment of referees. I said I really admired the work Sunday League had put in to improve the treatment of referees but there remained a wee bit to be done. I said that I hoped the teams there give referees with as much respect as they give me. Yes, the ego had to come out some time, huh?

Sweet smell of success!

There you go, folks. Something I'm proud of. Another form of recognition for my refereeing in a year that has been pretty bloody good!