Ray the Ref: blowing the whistle on life as a football official

When faced with tragedy, the instinctive human response is to distance itself from the root of the tragedy. But for referee Ray Lewis and his officiating team on 7^th May 1989, it was to step out at Old Trafford and officiate the rescheduled game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

There had been just 23 days since the same four officials took to the field to officiate the FA Cup game at Hillsborough in a match that lasted just seven minutes, and changed the landscape of English football forever.

Ray had been in charge of matches of this calibre before. Back in 1983 he held the whistle when Liverpool and Burnley clashed in the League Cup semi-final, and again in 1987 when Tottenham took on Watford in the same stage of the FA Cup.

But there isn’t a number of games that can prepare you for what would turn out to be the UK’s worst sporting disaster.

Ray describes how in those days there was a lot of movement in the terraces: “They used to try and fill up the ones behind the goal first.

“So, people were moved out of the centre couple of blocks and into the ones behind the corner flag.”

All this was going on whilst the match was underway.

Television footage from the day shows a police inspector coming over to the referee, and Ray recalls the conversation from that moment: “He was sort of saying, can you get the players off the field.

“We’ve got major problems.”

It wasn’t until about twenty to four that Ray and his team heard there had been fatalities.

The initial belief was that the ‘major problems’ would be resolved, before getting the game back underway. Of course, the extent of the problems till this point was still unknown to them.

At that stage, the officials and players were up the tunnel and in their dressing rooms. Soon though, the dressing rooms were needed for a different purpose altogether.

“We in fact didn’t get changed until probably about quarter to seven”, Ray recalls.

“The dressing rooms were being used as first aid rooms.”

Yet despite witnessing first-hand the horrific events that took place at Hillsborough that day, why did Ray and his officiating team decide to take on the game when it was played at Old Trafford?

“I think we referees are pretty strong characters”, he says.

They had discussions over the phone regarding what they should do, and explained their reasoning for wanting to officiate the rescheduled match.

“We felt that we had more understanding, having been there for the first game.

“It gave us an idea of what the temperature was going to be not only on the pitch, but also on the terraces.

“It wasn’t going to be easy for anyone, but we thought at the end of it, they’d be better for us to do it.”

The game ended in a 3-1 Liverpool victory over Nottingham Forest, with a minute’s silence being held to remember those who lost their lives at Hillsborough.

A Liverpool flag could be seen flying in the wind atop a pole at Old Trafford at the beginning of the match coverage too.

“I think the general public in the whole of the country wanted Liverpool to win, because of losing 96 of their supporters”, Ray says.

“I didn’t help in any way for them with any decision or anything like that, for them to win that game.

“But they did it on their own.

“It was a difficult game to handle, simply because no-one really had experienced anything like that before.”

It wasn’t until 2021 when the death tally increased to 97 after a coroner ruled Liverpool fan Andrew Devine was unlawfully killed after sustaining life-changing injuries at Hillsborough.

Liverpool went onto beat their Merseyside rivals 3-2 in the final to lift the trophy.

Getting to the point in his career where Ray walked out at Hillsborough hadn’t been an easy ride.

Refereeing at the time wasn’t considered as a valid career path, and many would work a day job before pulling on the black uniform at the weekend.

Ray was a regional manager for Berni Inn, a British steakhouse chain established in 1955. The work involved covering an area from Salisbury to Canterbury, and with offices located at Gatwick, he would often fly out to Glasgow too.

All the while, travelling across the country to take charge of a game each week.

Being a referee wasn’t the first choice for Ray, though.

“The decision soon came that I was a bloody awful footballer”, he says.

But he did enjoy refereeing, and so it was decided that was the route to pursue instead.

Whilst it took 13 years of refereeing at the top flight to make it onto the FIFA list, he did make the jump from Isthmian League football (considered amateur at the time) straight to the Football League – “a hell of a jump”.

Now, referees are able to bridge this gap with the National League, as well as the National Conference North and South.

Match officials are currently announced at 4pm on a Monday ahead of the weekend’s fixtures, whereas for Ray, it would be in the form of a booklet, issued with the allocations for the coming months’ games.

Before making it onto the referee list for the Football League, Ray was a linesman, making his first appearance at Brighton and Hove Albion.

It wasn’t until five years later that he would walk out at Exeter for his first game with the whistle in the Football League.

At the time, referees would take longer to progress up the ranks, for the Football League considered that a person under 30 didn’t have the experience and knowhow required to officiate at the top league in the country.

If you compare this to the current English referees, Michael Oliver made it to the international list just after his 30^th birthday, having made his first Premier League referee appearance aged just 25 years and 182 days.

The quicker development and progression of referees in the modern day is partly down to the PGMOL, Ray believes.

Formed in 2001, the organisation aims to improve refereeing standards, with match observers assigned to each EFL match to provide a report on the match officials’ performance; managers of clubs are also asked to produce a report on the referee.

A later development has been the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR). This allows a match official in a studio to recommend to the on-field referee to have a look at a replay when they believe a ‘clear and obvious error’ has been made, or ‘serious incident missed’.

So, what does a former first division referee make of the decision to bring VAR into the game?

“Let me say that I don’t think we’ve got it right yet”, says Ray.

“It’s one of those things that I think with time, we will be able to sort it out.

“But I don’t think we’re there yet.

“Would it be better if they put it onto a big screen like they do in rugby union?

“Maybe, because I think that it would sell a decision better, than it just coming up with a referee signalling an offside or a goal.”

During Ray’s career, technology of this kind was no-where to be seen. Referees would have a whistle; the linesmen would have flags. There were no earpieces or video footage to refer to.

Yet he believes this wasn’t actually a hindrance: “I think sometimes the control was better because we didn’t have anything to do apart from keep the ball between the referee and the linesman.

“If you did that, you’re picking up 95% of what was happening around you.”

There would always be those who disagreed with you, whether that be the thousands of fans from the terraces, managers on the side-lines, or the players on the pitch with you.

Ray remembers: “In my day, we had the ‘Crazy Gang’ at Wimbledon, that you never really knew how they would turn out on a Saturday afternoon.

“There were the likes of Paul Gascoigne, a difficult character until you could read him.

“An excellent footballer, but he did choose to do some silly things.”

Even now, the technology isn’t available for everyone. VAR and goal line technology are only equipped at Premier League grounds in England, and earpieces for communication become less and less available the lower down the pyramid you look.

Whether an official has the technology at their disposal or not, it doesn’t stop them from receiving abuse.

A study by Dr Tom Webb and Martin Cassidy, co-authors of the 2020 book Referees, Match Officials & Abuse found that 93.7% of football match officials have been physically or verbally abused during a match in England.

The Premier League is broadcast across the world, with research company SPOR+MARKT finding that it has an annual TV audience of 4.7 billion people, but it’s not just great goals that are shown.

So too are the incidents where officials are abused, and Ray believes this has a knock-on effect to matches at grassroots level as well: “Usually if there’s something on a Saturday night on Match of the Day, there’s someone around the country that will try the exact same thing on the Sunday morning.”

Asked how he thinks this abuse could be resolved, Ray says: “I think the business of caution for dissent may have slipped.

“It’s like most things, if you don’t penalise these people where it hurts the most, i.e., in their pocket, you know, they probably will have a go at you the following week.”

He recalls an incident when attending an independent school match: “There was one parent - he was a visiting parent.

“He was asked to appear in the headmaster’s office of his son’s school, and told that we don’t accept people speaking and talking and lowering the standards of sportsmanship.

“So please don’t go to another game – you’re not welcome.

“That type of thing does more good because that soon goes around to the school that the parent has been barred from attending.”

Whilst abuse appears to be a part of the job description as a referee, Ray Lewis does look back on his career fondly, having taken charge of matches in what was then called the National League for 24 years, from 1969 to 1993.

A moment which sticks out to him in particular was during the FA Cup Semi Final in 1991 between Tottenham and Arsenal.

Wembley Stadium was the venue, with 77,893 fans attending to watch the North London rivals face off.

Arsenal had seen off Cambridge United 2-1 in the previous round, then called the Sixth Round Proper, whilst Tottenham beat Notts County at White Hart Lane curtesy of an 83^rd minute goal by Paul Gascogne.

But it was Gascoigne’s goal in the next round that remains in the memory for Ray, and he got to witness it up close on the pitch: “It was the first ever semi-final at Wembley, when he shot from about 30, 32 yards and beat Seaman, up in the air type thing.

“By standing behind it, you could see the ball careering straight into the top corner of the net.”

It wasn’t just the English game that Ray officiated for. Before making it to the FIFA list he was abroad a couple of times in the officiating teams from England.

One time he went to Sofia, in Bulgaria, against Barcelona, and got to see Johan Cruyff play whilst running the lines.

The game didn’t disappoint either. In the home leg, Barcelona had won 4-0, seemingly out of sight of their Bulgarian counterparts, however within seven minutes of the second leg, the Spanish side were 2-0 down. Barcelona went on to win 7-6 on aggregate in the end, but not a bad game to break yourself into officiating in Europe.

Over time, Ray would develop a routine before each match, laying out his kit before bagging it up, to make sure that everything was in the bag for the next day before travelling by train or car to the game.

Even with this organisation, kit trouble was still possible. Ray recalls a time when he was in Cologne with fellow FIFA referee Neil Midgley: “He got his kit lost in the transition from Manchester to Heathrow.

“Luckily, he knew enough people in the Manchester area, and he lived most of his life there, to get the police involved with trying to find this bag with his kit in.”

Returning home from refereeing a game, it’s easy to play the incidents in your head, or hear the critiques from media.

Retired Premier League referee Mike Dean told Peter Crouch on his podcast how he would listen to the radio on the ride home after a game.

Ray admits: “Some of my colleagues in those times would kick every ball when they got home and saw their wife.

“A lot of referees eat, sleep and drink it.”

Yet this wasn’t the case for Ray himself: “We had an understanding here that the game is over.

“How did the game go?

“The game went well, thanks very much indeed.

“Full stop.

“So, I never brought the linen home with me as far as that was concerned.”

On the 1^st of May 1993, Ray returned home after refereeing his final game in the Premier League, a 1-1 draw between Wimbledon and Tottenham.

Taking charge of a game featuring the ‘Crazy Gang’ was perhaps a fitting end to officiating in the top-flight of English football having done so across three decades.

Stepping down wasn’t a decision he made himself though. Ray says: “I was told I was standing down.

“It wasn’t as if it was my decision.

“No, they’d had enough of me, I think.”

That wasn’t the end of refereeing for Ray though. He continued to take charge of games in the rest of the Football League, finishing with Peterborough against Hereford, before refereeing youth and school football.

When he was 68, Ray had a hip operation, and soon decided that he would retire from refereeing: “I felt that I wasn’t getting around the pitch as quick, as well as I was in the past.

“So that was good timing for hanging up the whistle.”

After he finished refereeing professionally, Ray was still involved in the officiating scene. He spent 17 years as the FA representative for Surrey, during which time he was chairman of the referees committee, using his experiences over the years to develop the refereeing structure for the future.

Now, aged 78, he is the president of the Surrey FA, having previously occupied the roles of referee secretary, vice chairman, and chairman.

Ray had worked in the hospitality and catering industry for the majority of his refereeing life, but decided one day to run a business himself, doing embroidery work for, guess what … referee kits.