Episode 17 - Eddie Wolstenholme and Dr Liam Slack

And what I liked about the refereeing coach was I started off at Lancashire FA as the manager and I was coaching level nine part-time referees.

Did any of them make it to the big time?

The people on the list who did make it to me when they started were Neil Swarbrick, Paul Tini,

Darren Bond,

I'm trying to think who else there was quite a few Scott Oldham

Scott Oldham was a football league referee yeah

there was more than that lots of them there was that many there was

so I suppose the point you're making is you saw talent early on and

Well, what I like was people are like doing all the different levels because the laws of the game are no different with all different levels.

How you referee the game is different at most levels.

People don't think it is what it is.

Explain that to people that might not know.

When you're refereeing in 50-60,000 people, which I didn't do very often, I didn't get that many Premier League games because I got on at 47, I was the oldest on the list.

So nobody will take that away from me, not even David Ellery because he was three months younger, which he knows.

And that was when they became full-time.

So I got on at 47 years of age, which is...

Old, really, because when I did the Sunderland Chant final, at 40, just turned 44, they said I was too old.

Too old to be a Premier League referee, but when they went full-time, they took me.

So I thought the transition from every level is the same, but they do do different.

And what I mean by that is, when I went to Darlington, our refereed team, it was Scarborough then.

They may not know me, but Scarborough and Darlington, it was like a little kick-up.

And there was 1,000 on, 200.

I could hear every word.

I sent three, sorry about this, I sent three players off from Scarborough and sent the manager off.

Or Darlington, or Darlington, we're a team, sorry, at Scarborough.