Added Time: Surviving Cancer, Death Threats and the Premier League

by Mark Halsey, Ian Ridley

Television has taken us inside the Premier League, into the lives of its players and managers, as never before but what is it really like to be a referee in modern English football, trying to control a bunch of millionaires and their stressed-out leaders? Then getting home to find out you have made a mistake and been identified in millions of households as public enemy number one? To be issued with death threats on social media by football 'fans' who say they hope your cancer returns? ADDED TIME takes you where no other book has gone - inside the dressing rooms on match days, into the intense tunnel and on-field conversations and confrontations between officials and the game's participants. It chronicles the highs and lows, joy and pain, and reveals the human face of that man in the middle. Mark Halsey also lifts the lid on surviving the internal politics, personalities and intrigue of top-flight refereeing, on altercations with Sir Alex Ferguson and earfuls from Wayne Rooney. Running through Halsey's powerful and poignant story is his brave battle with throat cancer, through surgery and gruelling treatment, after which the popular Halsey returned to the top.It granted him no immunity from the dangerous stresses that can beset the modern referee, however - stresses that included those death threats. What kept him going for 17 years at the top? Strength of character, a loving family - and the unlikely friendship of a man supposedly the enemy of one Jose Mourinho.

Genres: Nonfiction, Football

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 17, 2013

Reviews

[PAUL · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book but the self-pity in the latter part of the book began to get a tad tedious. What surprised me was the very unprofessional attitude of Halsey and his naivety in thinking there was nothing wrong with hobnobbing with famous managers like Mourinho and Ferguson. Taking hospitality from Mourinho and texting Ferguson before a Liverpool v Man. Utd match he was officiating are just two examples and no doubt all this got back to his bosses at the PGMOL who obviously took a dim view of his actions as per his constant sniping at them. His persistent asking for players signed shirts also grated with me. In the 1960's and 1970's you wouldn't even know who the referee was in any particular game. They just did their job, got in their car and went home. Now they are all wannabe celebrities.
Not that I doubt his integrity, far from it. But he certainly left himself open to persuasion. I remember Halsey as a fine referee who let the game flow and the players express themselves without resorting to break up the flow of the game for petty indiscretions. He would be in my top ten of Premiership referees of all time and if reffing today would be head and shoulders above the incompetent buffoons masquerading as football referees.
But there is a reason he didn't get a Cup Final or the big European games and he has only himself to blame for that.

[Dave T · Rating 3 out of 5]

The autobiography of Mark Halsey. One of the country's top referees and his experience surviving cancer.

This is a rare glimpse into the world of football refereeing and Halsy definitely has a story to tell. To view the inner workings of the game is fascinating to any football fan and when names are mentioned it brings delight, but this story is a little too long. Not in length, but in content. What starts as genuine insight and revelation by an articulate storyteller turns (towards the end) simply of a man on a rant, endlessly complaining. Mark Halsey let's us know his opinion on events that we're mostly familiar with, but these opinions become increasingly negative as his career in the book progresses, until the end where they are the full content of the text and he hasn't much good to say about anybody or anything.

This book tells us more about the personality of the author rather than the events within. He comes across as: honest, stubborn, self centred (but at the same time considerate) and sadly somewhat pessimistic. I'd have hoped that a person with such an eventful life and career where he achieved so much could walk away a smile on his face, but Halsey seems to have an axe to grind here. I'm not saying his criticism isn't valid, I'm saying it doesn't make very good reading.

I think this book would have been better had opinions, feelings and events not been so interwoven.

DT 10/01/2014