On a half with the top referees

A few weeks ago, I was honored with some "old comrades" for my 50-year membership in the Erding referee group.

I couldn't believe that so much time has passed since I took the referee's exam back then, at the age of 13.

My father, who was group leader at the time, had persuaded me to take the exam.

It was an exciting time - especially as a young referee, when you got to know many other young colleagues during the remedial courses at the Grünwald sports school.

Incidentally, one of them was the soon to be retiring BFV President Dr.

Rainer Koch, with whom I am still friends today.

It was particularly exciting when we were allowed to meet the Bundesliga referees.

For example Rudi Frickel, who in 1976 was the first referee to abandon a Bundesliga game – Kaiserslautern versus Düsseldorf – after throwing a bottle at the linesman.

He died two years ago, and to my regret there was no obituary for him anywhere.

Later, we young referees were amazed when the Bavarian Bundesliga icons Max Klauser or Aron Schmidhuber sat down at the table with us youngsters and chatted easily with us during further training courses.

What I found the funniest at the time was Manfred Amerell, who died far too early. He was always in a good mood and told one anecdote after the other.

At that time I had made it to the 5th league as a referee and almost got promoted to the 4th league.

But for very flimsy reasons, I was denied promotion, which upset me so much that I no longer had any great ambitions and focused more on playing actively at FC Langengeisling.

But of course I'm still a referee with heart and soul.

And when I see how successful the guys from our Erdinger group are, I'm really happy.

When I see that Julian Schaub, Christian Schunke and Rico Spyra are officiating in the Landesliga next season, and Manuel Müller in the Bayernliga, I think that's outstanding.

But what I'm most happy about is Wolfgang Haslberger's promotion to the second division – at just 29 years old.

In any case, there is still something in it, because he has everything that a top referee needs.

Should he ever be promoted to the 1st Bundesliga, which I wish him with all my heart, then I would be very happy if he would one day join me at the table for a half.

I do numbers.