LOSE-LOSE

• Elleray was in awe by the King Fahd stadium where he was for the World Cup qualifier SA - China. Full size gyms for both dressing rooms, the VIP room made of marble and gold and even a huge bedroom underneath the stands where the officials could stay the night if the crowd became too hostile.
  There was also a small hospital and an operating room.
• Elleray's life was featured in a Channel 4 documentary named "The Man in Black".
• In 1998 he was invited to take charge of the first leg of the Brazilian League championship final Sao Paolo vs Corinthians at Morumbi stadium. In his book Elleray writes he had no idea who the players were. He didn't do any research and almost booked the same person twice without sending him off. Amazing (and shocking too), but the Brazilians were happy with him and all went well.
• Elleray was all for what he called "the sinbin", instead of being sent off a player could get a temporary cooling off period, as in Ice hockey.
• Paul Durkin went to the World Cup instead of him, but Elleray and Durkin are not good friends and Elleray thinks Durkin said bad things about him because he was only sent to France after Elleray had turned the appointment down.
  Durkin's World Cup was not a success, he didn't do very well and got only one match.
• He managed to live a kind of double life: until 2009 he was the house master of Druries, part of a famous public school for boys called Harrow. The school is very upper class and traditional (boys wearing straw hats to class, dressing up for dinner etc), but as a referee he was part of a completely different world. A world where he had to deal with players like Paul Gascoigne and with fans on the train on the way back after a match.
  A house master has 60 boys (13-18) who spend two years in his house. The master chooses which boys come to his house.
• For anyone else but the English, public schools seem coming from another planet, or straight from a Harry Potter novel. There are "houses�?" with names like Moretons, Druries The Grove, The Knoll. They play their own ball game, with their own ball (large and heavy) and their own rules (when you catch the ball you must yell "yards!"�? which is followed by three strides while wiggling a wand and saying the magic words).
  "�?We had a magnificent victory over the Knoll in the Torpids"�?, Elleray writes in his book Referee! which is a sort of diary, a one year in the life of a referee / house master.
  The fact that the house master sends and receives many letters and even uses a fax machine (in 1997 and 1998, when normal people were already accustomed to computers and e-mail) adds to the Harry Potterishy feeling of it all.
  
  At Harrow they do semi-military exercises, go to church often and sing Harrow songs. Everything seems to be done in competition - music, choir singing, theatre, debating, reading and of course all kinds of sports - and everything always ends with dinner and drinks till late. (There seems to be a lot of champagne).
  Not a bad life at all. But a life without women. Only twice women are mentioned in Referee!: New Year's eve is spent with a lady friend, eating salmon and drinking champagne, and later in the year Elleray drives to visit a former girlfriend with whom he has lunch.