“I never thought referees did as much as what we do now,” says Sam Allison, who played for Chippenham Town and Frome Town during his playing career, which started at Swindon.
“We are training full-time, sometimes two, three sessions a day, making sure that we are ready on a Saturday afternoon.
“Some of it (not understanding referees’ workload) is probably ignorance, lack of awareness, lack of communication being disseminated to people out there.
“I think of my ignorance of just thinking referees just turned up, refereed the game and then went home.
“We have all the preparation, all the training, all the sacrifices, all the commitment, all the desire, all the support networks, people investing in you to make sure that you are ready in the best position to deliver a game.”
Allison, a former firefighter, is the fourth official for Manchester City‘s trip to Crystal Palace on Friday while colleague Sam Barrott has been given Saturday’s early match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
Barrott took charge of Arsenal’s Community Shield win over Manchester City this month and was in the Faroe Islands on 20 August to referee Ki Klaksvik’s 0-0 draw with Riga in the Europa Conference League.
Different teams and different tactics means a different approach to each game, with officials prepping with Pro Ref’s analysis team who provide key information to understand the way a team is going to play, to support the flow of the game.
It comes after a summer of work to ensure the officials can match – and better – the demands of the Premier League.
“At the moment we’ve got five substitutions and we see all the time fresh legs for teams can change the momentum in a game,” said Barrott.
“If three new attacking players are on that are all very pacey after 70 minutes you know they’re going to change the way they play, they’re going to try and push.
“That normally means an increase in output for us and when that happens, there’s not a point in us where we go, we can’t handle this’.
“We’ve been trying to push the demands of where we are, everybody’s trying to get better. Football has the 1% gains, every game or every training session we’re very similar in the mindset, we want to be better.”