Seeing Red (11 page)

But I was not called for an interview. For the first time, but not the last, football made me cry. That was the first time that Julia, who was then my fiancée, realized how important refereeing was to me.

On the day I heard that I was not getting an interview, I ran the line at a Football League match at Crystal Palace. I was in a foul mood and so, if you were there that day and think I missed all the offsides, that was why.

Given my history of pranks, the decision not to give me an interview was not really surprising, but it was probably also a test. The Football League wanted to see how I would react to being turned down.

I reacted by getting my head down and doing my absolute best. And so, twelve months later, I was, indeed, called before the Football League selection panel. The first question was, ‘How did you feel last year when your friend Paul Taylor was promoted and you were not?' I replied that I was disappointed for myself but delighted for Paul. I said that the rejection strengthened my determination to reach the required standard and to join him on the League list. It was the right answer. That May, my dad presented me with that certificate.

As well as Mum and Dad, there is someone else who helped shape my refereeing, and I have not properly introduced her to you yet: Julia, my wife.

I first set eyes on Julia on Friday, 10 November 1989. No, I haven't noted it down on one of my results sheets, but it was a day and a date I have not forgotten. It was a pivotal moment of my life because Julia has provided the calm haven I have needed; the placid place to come home to, where I am just Graham, not referee Graham Poll.

We met in a pub in Berkhamsted. I was working as a salesman, I was a referee in the Isthmian League and in the Conference and was a Football League linesman. I'd bought a two-up, two-down in Berkhamsted, but didn't know many people in the town.

One friend I did have was Michael Oakley, the estate agent who had sold me the house. No wonder he liked me: he had banked a big commission. Anyway, that Friday, I had gone home after work, had eaten my microwave chilli con carne (with extra-hot chilli sauce), was doing some ironing
and planning an early night before a game the following day.

That charmingly domestic scene was interrupted by a call from Michael, who insisted – obviously I needed a lot of persuading – to join him for couple of beers. Just a couple. So I met him in the pub and during the evening Julia came in with another girl and began talking to some people Michael knew. So we had an excuse to go over and chat to the two girls. At the end of the evening, I asked Julia for her telephone number. She has told me since that she never gave her number out to strange men, but she gave it to an odd one that night.

The problem was that when I wanted to telephone her on Sunday morning, I could not remember her name. She hates being called Julie by mistake, so when she had told Michael and me her name, she had stressed the last syllable of Julia. So I remembered clearly that she had a name ending in an ‘a'. But I simply could not recall which name ending in ‘a' it was.

I phoned my mum and asked for some suggestions. She came up with many: Tina, Vera, Sara, Rebecca, Mona, Tessa, Sheila, et cetera. No, not et cetera – you know what I mean. Eventually she suggested ‘Julia' and I thought that sounded right. Thankfully, it was. Things might have been very different if I had rung and asked for Tina. That is the name of her younger sister.

I rang Julia and we went out on that Sunday night and again on the Wednesday night. Then, on the following Saturday, I drove around to her parents' house to take her out again. She worked in the John Lewis department store in Watford and had not been home long. She was upstairs, getting ready. In her mum and dad's lounge, you can see the
stairs, and after a while she came down those stairs wearing a blue dress with buttons down both sides. I knew then, without a scintilla of doubt, that I loved her. And, reader, I married her. A few years passed before the wedding, and several more have passed since, but I can still easily locate among my memories that image of her descending those stairs in that blue dress.

Julia was just nineteen; I was twenty-six. Every time I took her out I gave her a little present – often a sample from the company for whom I was working. I might have been cheap, but it was the thought that counted, and the effort I put in. On Valentine's Day I looked on every floor of a car park in Watford until I found the battered old Ford Fiesta Julia used to drive. I wrote, ‘I love you' on the back in toothpaste (another free sample). Then I went to her home, persuaded her mum to let me go to Julia's room and left the empty toothpaste dispenser on the bed with a single red rose. All together now, aaaah!

Julia got her own back by insisting that night that we went out in her car, with the messy affirmation of ardour message still on it. Everyone in The Boat pub – our local, by the canal in Berkhamsted – was greatly amused.

Julia was not into football at all. She just didn't get it. Her dad was a rugby chap and football did nothing for her. So I took her to a Millwall game, where I was running the line. That could have finished our relationship before it had really started but it was a big match, with a passionate atmosphere, and she found it very exciting. From that moment, she started coming to see my games. She changed jobs and began working in London, but she would make her way by public transport to wherever I was in action. That meant so much to me. And the old boys in Isthmian League boardrooms
loved the bubbly young blonde who came in for a drink with me after games.

I think it helped our relationship that I was already refereeing when Julia and I met. She realized from the very beginning that it was important to me. So, in later years, when I changed jobs because of the refereeing, she understood. That was who I was.

I proposed to her in the January after we had met. She said, ‘Oh! Don't ask me. Don't ask me.' It was not the response I had hoped for, but at least it wasn't a ‘No'.

So I took her to Paris but the trip did not start smoothly. I thought I was a big shot, who knew his way around Heathrow airport, but I parked at the wrong terminal and we had a long trek to the right one. But we did get to Paris and when I proposed again in that romantic city, Julia said ‘Yes'.

That was April 1990. We married on 13 June 1992; Graham Barber, my best refereeing buddy, was best man. The date was available because nobody wanted to get married on the thirteenth but Julia and I both thought that if you worry that a superstition might undermine your marriage then your relationship is not on very firm ground.

When I was interviewed, along with all the other referees, for the World Cup match programme in 2006, I was asked my ‘favourite occasion'. Most of the refs put something about a big football match, or some occasion like that, which I suppose is what you were supposed to say. But I put ‘My wedding day'. And the first match I refereed at the 2006 World Cup was on 13 June, our anniversary.

But I am getting ahead of myself again. Julia and I married in 1992. Our eldest daughter, Gemma, was born in January 1994. Josie arrived in April 1996 and Harry came along in
February 2000, well in time for the FA Cup Final. The children became part of my calm haven. To have done what I have done – to have dealt with all the controversies in refereeing, the media attention, the journeys abroad and so on – you need somewhere very stable to come home to, and someone very stable and calm. Julia is very level-headed, a fantastic mother, and can run a household when her man is away. I have been very lucky.

Refereeing has cut across family life too many times, I admit. For instance, I missed too many birthdays. So, in 2002 I asked for 24 February to be kept clear of refereeing appointments in order to celebrate Harry's second birthday as a family. But then Philip Don, who was in charge of the elite group referees, telephoned and told me he needed me for the 24th after all.

I said, ‘Philip, there are twenty-four other referees on the list. Surely you can get one of them to do whatever game is being played?'

He said, ‘Do I have to spell it out to you? You know exactly what the game is.'

But I didn't. He spelled it out for me. ‘The Worthington Cup final.'

‘Ah,' I said. ‘Can you give me half an hour?'

Julia was not happy about Harry's dad working on his birthday. I recall the word ‘again' passing her lips during our discussion. In fact, she said ‘again' again and again. But she knew that if I turned down the appointment, it would count against me, and so we made the weekend of the final into a family event. We all went to Cardiff for the game and we did all celebrate Harry's birthday together.

Football has not been entirely unkind to Julia, however. When she came to watch the first time I refereed Manchester
United (in a 3–2 win against Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road), I told Ryan Giggs during the game that my wife was in the crowd. I said, ‘She thinks you're great. Why don't you do something special for her?' I was only joking, not demonstrating bias – and certainly not expecting what happened next. A few minutes later Giggs shimmied passed two players and scored a glorious goal. As he jogged back to the centre for the restart he asked me, ‘Will that do for her?' Come on, how many husbands could ask for something like that for their wives?

When referees became professional – which meant a big change in our lives – Julia made just two stipulations. The first was that we were not allowed to move from our house in Tring, because she loves living there, and the second was that I had to promise her that every year we would have a two-week holiday, away from football, when it was just us and our family – when I was Dad, and Graham, not a referee. I used to get offered trips for the family to Milan, Barcelona and places like that by football people in those cities. Julia used to say, ‘Don't you dare even think about it.'

Actually, I didn't often think about it. I much preferred a holiday in which I could forget about the refereeing for a short while. But it was not always possible. Since the start of the Premier League, and its wall-to-wall coverage by the media, my face has become very familiar to a lot of people and so they come up to me on holiday.

It might seem churlish to complain – after all, ‘arrogant' Graham Poll was always seeking the limelight, apparently – but I am not moaning about any of those who approached me as individuals. They were usually perfectly pleasant and polite – as individuals. Each person who asks, ‘Could you
sign this, please?' is only asking once. But when a dozen different individuals ask you every day, and when that happens for fourteen consecutive days, and when it happens when you are having a quiet family meal in a restaurant, it can become a bit of a pain. I could be playing bat and ball on a beach with one of my daughters and a couple of lads would come and sit and watch. They'd say, ‘All right, Pollie? We're West Ham fans,' or something. They don't mean to intrude but I just need to have some time as a husband and a dad.

The footballers I refereed could easily afford to go to the sort of place where nobody bothers you on holiday, except an attentive drinks waiter. We couldn't afford that sort of destination, but we did try and upgrade our holidays a little in pursuit of a little peace and quiet. To some of you, that will provide more proof of aloofness. To me, it was just trying to be a decent husband and father.

That is why Tring is such a lovely place to live: nobody bothers us when we are out and about. We live in Tring because it is Julia's family home town but also because it provides a sanctuary. Tring is not a football town and the good folk who live there do not feel the need to talk to me all the time about football. They are not indifferent to us. At times they have provided wonderful, genuine, warm support, but they respect our privacy and give us space to live.

Of course, if I go to a school to present prizes or give a talk, or if I dish out the medals at Tring Tornadoes (the town's youth football club) then I sign autographs for as long as they like. That is part of trying to help out at the school or football club. Sometimes they queue up for my autograph and, as I sign, they say, ‘Thanks, and who are you?' But signing autographs is not a problem in those circumstances. It is an honour.

But if I am in a pub, nobody takes any notice of me and that is great. Well, they did take some notice on one occasion, but that was great as well.

I'd had a disaster of a game and had suffered a severe kicking by the media. I felt stressed and under pressure. That week was turmoil. I had to do another game, under maximum scrutiny and with minimum confidence. But, that week I went to the King's Arms with Paul Chaplin, a good mate, to help him take part in Tring Beer Festival (you can see why I love the town!). I went to the bar to buy a round, as I do occasionally, and the guy behind the bar said, ‘Graham, yours is paid for. There are six Tring lads over there. They are on holiday from university and are going back next week. They don't want to bother you but they just want to show you their support. So they have bought you a beer.' Cheers lads. You didn't know how valuable that marvellous gesture was.

I am told that, after my World Cup mistake, when the
Sun
printed what they thought was a humorous jibe at me on their front page, people in Tring took umbrage on my behalf. I am told that at the newspapers section in our local Tesco store, the manager took the
Sun
off sale because so many people complained that it was objectionable. I used to be known as The Thing from Tring. Well, that remarkable demonstration of solidarity was a Tring thing. When told about it, I was profoundly moved.

I also received a letter from the town council in 2002 saying that by going to the World Cup I had put Tring on the map – as I have demonstrated with that letter from the fourteen-year-old lad, addressed, ‘G Poll, referee, Tring', which managed to reach me. However, for the sake of my friend Clive the postman, I'd rather you did not test that council statement too much.

One letter I could have done without was the death threat I received from Tottenham fans after the 2002 Worthington Cup Final. It was carefully posted abroad and it said, ‘You are dead.' I didn't tell Julia about it at the time and I didn't tell the police because I thought that would exacerbate the situation. I calculated that Tottenham fans probably had a few people they hated more than me and I worked out that people who are really going to kill you probably don't tell you about it beforehand.

On another occasion, a huge pair of pink, comedy spectacles were left on my doorstep. That meant that someone who didn't think much of my ability – or at least my eyesight – knew where I lived, which was a tad disconcerting. But, on balance, I thought it was probably a joke – and the kids liked the specs so much that we kept them.

Other deliveries are far less easily dismissed as unimportant. When I was a linesman, some charming fans often spat at me.

Before West Ham's Upton Park was modernized, the section of the ground known as the Chicken Run was notorious as a bear pit, if you will excuse the mixed animal metaphor. But nobody warned me about the phlegm. In my first game there as a linesman, I was assigned the Chicken Run side in the first half and, in the interval, the other linesman (an older and wiser chap) said, ‘You might as well do that side again in the second half because the back of your shirt is covered in spit already.'