'Your Show' by Ashley Hickson-Lovence
I used to be an official in a men’s sport. It taught me a lot about dealing with people, and about my own strengths and weaknesses under pressure. Now, you’d want to have some level of masochism to choose to do it, especially when there’s little monetary gain. On rainy February Saturday afternoons there you are, a target to be abused by players who regard you as either weak or pernickety. At least the players are under your control, however: the spectators are another matter.
The oldest cliché about refereeing or umpiring is that the best one is the man or woman you didn’t notice at all. However, I find the ones who do draw your eye fascinating. Think of Pierluigi Collina in football, and Nigel Owens in rugby: it’s a pleasure watching them at their craft, at the top of their game. Uriah Rennie was another who drew the eye: he had a presence, was super-fit and fast, and of course he was unique: the only black Premiership referee then or since. The pressures he dealt with as he made his way up the English leagues must have been extraordinary.:
(1977) It’s on your shoulders, the weight of being black. Always looking, listening and learning, trying to carve out your own identity in this gritty city.
So a new novel by Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Your Show, a fictionalistion of Rennie’s career, drew me, and I flew through it on a couple of flights recently. The ‘show’ in the title refers to the sense some fans had that it was the official thought the match was all about him. At half-time in a match at Preston North End the stadium announcer welcomed spectators back at the end of half-time with the words ‘Enjoy the second half of the Uriah Rennie Show.’ But in Hickson-Lovence’s vision Rennie just has a resilient confidence and an absolute determination to apply the rules, whatever people thought of him. You can check out various decisions on YouTube: a famous dismissal of Alan Shearer seems bewildering, but another controversial incident involving Roy Keane and Jason McAteer shows Rennie at his impressive best.
The novel jumps back and forward from year to year, including a section near the start of his childhood in Jamaica, before Uriah accompanied his younger sister on a flight to join the rest of the family in Sheffield. There is no hugely dramatic narrative arc here: Rennie longed to referee the FA Cup final, and never did, but otherwise by any standards he was successful, with a long career at the top, including a spell as a UEFA referee travelling around Europe. At one stage he was ‘demoted’ to the Nationwide League, but plugged away in professionally and got himself back to the top division. The drama is in the matches themselves, and how Rennie handles situations of high stress. But the latter part of the novel is unexpectedly sweet and moving, in documenting the huge extent in recent years of his local charity work through snippets from various media:
Retired Premier League referee Uriah Rennie has attended the opening of a new tyre swing at Pitsmoor Adventure Playground.
and
When I say “big man”... this is a “real big man!” The only black referee in the UK football Premiership League, Uriah Rennie. He came out, to support Leyton Orient Legends v Men United Charity Football match to help raise awareness of Prostate Cancer UK, as the official referee for the game. What a man! I salute you Sir for your works, as you are an inspiration.
Already the era that Hickson-Lawrence writes about seems to be historical. Shockingly, it turns out that Rennie is now 62. These days,
It’s all Snapchat, Bitcoin, Fiat 500s, tattoo sleeves and cocaine off car keys, men necking pints in overpriced PSG tops yapping on about Mbappé and what could have been in the summer, in Russia, if football came home again, and fold-up Brompton bikes, Apple AirPods, tinny grime music, Gen Z snowflakes, sliders with socks, half-and-half scarves, pubes in the pisser and pictures taken in ‘portrait mode’, podcasts, Netflix, Fleabag reruns and vulnerable boys being sucked in by the lure of county lines.
That zippy sentence gives you a sense of the liveliness of the style. The whole experience is very enjoyable.