Referee Appreciation Quotes

The afternoon was given over to sport, or to the appreciation of sport, as Ulf watched two football matches on the television, one after the other. They were scrappy and inconclusive games, marred by several ill-natured arguments with the referee. That always irritated Ulf, who felt that referees should be granted powers of arrest. If the police were waiting on the lines, and offenders could be seized and marched off to the cells, then there would be none of this bad behaviour, thought Ulf. As it was, these overpaid and over-indulged sportsmen could play to the gallery, parading their egos in displays of arrogance and petulance that held up the game unnecessarily. And as for those who deliberately sought to prolong a match for strategic reasons by feigning injury, they would soon abandon that if referees were allowed to count them out on the ground, just as the umpires of boxing matches could do. They would not have to count up to ten, thought Ulf: three would probably be enough to restore these sham casualties to rude health.

The Order of Khryl had a refined appreciation of the power of showmanship. They had arranged a spectacle on the order of the Nuremberg Rally in Triumph of the Will. Arguably even better, as the Nazis had been too fastidious to build a national event around mortal combat between race-champions. The Khryllians would have had Hitler do the intro for a cage match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling with spiked cesti and no referee. To the death. Now, that’s showbiz— And pretty much what they were going for with this particular Khryl’s Justice.