Sanguine Paul, fourth official in the PL is right at the top of the tree, would we know who you were, recognise you as a league referee?
I can see why there is a struggle for Sunday league referees - increasingly a cesspit for violent behaviour and abuse.
No, not now. Retired.
When i was doing this in the late 90's and into the noughties the setup was different. You would run the line one level up from being a referee or a combination of the two. I was refereeing in the National League which came with appointments as 4th Official in Premier League games. You now have the select group we all know about and "linesman" are full time "linesman" if they chose that path.
Luckily enough to do televised games etc and plenty of clips of me which i wont be linking lol - i was in the era of refereeing along with Rob Styles, Steve Lodge, David Elleray, Paul Durkin etc - i was following same path as Lee Probert. I would add i am alot younger than them, and again fortunate to experience all this at a very young age.
Refereeing abuse appears to be getting worse, if social media is anything to go by. Referee's are getting pilloried for even games at grassroots level. I saw one clip where the referee was getting dog abuse for an honest decision, viewed by 3 million people on line.