Being a referee is not exactly a path to popularity and when the whole stadium's chanting, "Maim the ref!" then it can be very lonely out there on the pitch. Georg Nonnenmacher and Henning Drechsler take a look at life as a referee, how they do the job, the skills and qualifications needed, how they cope with the insults, hidden fouls, difficult and sometimes wrong decisions, the threats (death and otherwise) and, above all, the question: why am I doing this to myself?