Decision was final

I’m not sure many young boys grow up wanting to be the next Uriah Rennie, the first and only Black man to referee in the Premier League, but I did. I first qualified as a football referee in 2007, aged 16, with my first game as the man in the middle at the famous Hackney Marshes in East London, in a men’s game in the Hackney and Leyton Sunday League. It was totally terrifying – I might have been the same skin colour as my hero Rennie, but with my long, cornrowed hair and slightly wonky glasses (my new contact lenses hadn’t arrived in time), I certainly didn’t much look like him.

Before the game in the old wooden shack that was the changing rooms back then, I was advised by some of the other referees, mostly older white men who looked like they’d been officiating for decades, that I should probably start heading towards my pitch now, 20 minutes before kick-off, as it was one of the furthest away. I quickly forced my feet into my new too-tight boots and trudged towards the pitch which was, as warned, a trek.

My whole body throbbed as I plonked my rucksack down on the touchline. I had a list of things not to forget scribbled on a bit of scrap paper nestled in between my yellow and red cards: don’t forget to check both nets for holes, don’t forget to check the players aren’t wearing jewellery, don’t forget to breathe.

As for the game, it’s fair to say, I hated every second. There was so much to remember, so many players to control, and it felt like I had to juggle a million things while constantly running to keep up with play. Jesus, I thought, if I’m struggling in front of an old man and his dog in this division four Sunday league game, God knows how Uriah does it in front of thousands every Saturday.

And I suppose, it was this formative experience as a young Black boy that sparked my desire to find out more about the only Black football referee I saw on the telly at the time, Uriah “Uri” Rennie. I wanted to understand what it would have been like for a Black man to come up through the system and make it to the very top, when all of the other refs, his colleagues, were white. I wanted to try to understand someone’s motivations to keep going while enduring endless abuse and having to deal with the incessant pressure of making potentially match-changing decisions every few minutes. And then at the final whistle, embark on a long journey home, put on a brave face to your family and try to compartmentalise the unfair treatment received earlier that day.

Back in 2011, I tweeted: “I’m gonna write a book about Uriah Rennie.” Four years later on Facebook I posted: “To write a book about Uriah Rennie is a genuine life ambition of mine.” In 2022, this dream has been achieved in the form of my second novel, Your Show, a novel based on the true story of Uriah Rennie’s pioneering efforts to rise through the ranks as a referee, while constantly confronted with the tensions and prejudices that emerge as a Black man performing on the biggest stage.

The book fictionalises moments of Uri’s early years spent in Jamaica and Sheffield, and notable matches he officiated as a professional referee, as he battles to make it to the top of his field as a sportsman of colour. The narrative tension largely manifests through his ambition to be respected as a Black man in a white world, his goal to referee the esteemed FA Cup final, and his attempts to dispel any apparent feud with Newcastle United’s Alan Shearer.

Despite a tough first fixture for me on the Marshes, I soon grew to love being a referee, and became quite good at it too, gaining promotion from park-level football at about the time Uri’s career was winding down. In my ten years or so as a qualified official, I was appointed to several county cup finals, refereed in front of hundreds of fans for various FA competitions, and, most Saturdays, took charge of highly pressured semi-professional league games all around the capital and the surrounding counties. In 2018, I even become a non-league observer for the FA, assessing referees aiming to climb the ladder themselves.

Admittedly, being a Black referee, I was often burdened by unhelpful preconceptions about my ability to manage the game before it had even begun. I was often part of the minority on the various refereeing panels I was a part of and, more often than not, my presence at the match at a club on a matchday was warmly welcomed. But there were a few occasions where being a young Black official from London, with a Fresh Prince-esque high-top to boot, was met with evident apprehension and, sometimes, hostility. As a result, I often felt like I had to work three times as hard, on and off the pitch, to prove that I was up to the job.

In Your Show, I draw on my own experiences as a football referee of colour, and combine it with wider reading and research about Uri’s career to craft a novel that everyone can enjoy, whether a football fan or not.

Instead of a forensic blow-by-blow biography, the book hopes to shine a light on Uri’s history-making, ceiling-breaking journey to the top. I have worked with the information available, including interviews with Uri himself, to produce a work that I hope readers will find lyrical, immersive and illuminating.

In writing Your Show, and undoubtedly inspired by David Peace’s 2006 novel The Damned Utd – a book that dramatises Brian Clough’s unsuccessful spell in charge of Leeds United – it was important that every scene in the book was pacey and propulsive, just like a good game of football. It was important to fashion a novel that was dynamic and thrilling, emulating the incessant movement of a vitriolic top-of-the-table clash, both in the manner of how the sentences are constructed but also with the formation of the words on the page.

Ultimately though, I hope Your Show will inspire young Black boys, and readers from other marginalised groups, to take up the whistle and give refereeing a go for themselves just like Uri first did back in 1979. Owing to a number of factors, including injury, my ambitions to become the next Uriah Rennie weren’t realised, so instead, my focus shifted to tell a version of his story that will hopefully encourage others to follow in his footsteps. As I see it, it has never been so important to hear the story of a Black life that matters a lot, but could, and should, matter a whole lot more.

Your Show by Ashley Hickson-Lovence is published by Faber in hardback and ebook