BIG INTERVIEW: Freckleton-based referee Leigh Doughty on his rise up the ranks to Championship official

It was 9.30pm and Leigh Doughty had just finished refereeing an early season Northern Premier League clash between Kendal and Ramsbottom and it had gone well.
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Or so he thought.

“Both clubs seemed happy, I’d not had any yellow cards in the game and then when I got into the clubhouse, my coach tore me to shreds,” said Leigh, recalling the chilly response that took the edge off that balmy August night.

“He said I should have had three, probably four cautions and I needed to decide where my career was going. He kept me there for 40 minutes – most people had gone home by the time he had finished with me.”

Leigh Doughty (Getty Images)Leigh Doughty (Getty Images)
Leigh Doughty (Getty Images)
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That was August 16, 2016. Coach Barry Oldham’s no-holds-barred review of his 90-minute Parkside performance proved a watershed moment for a young official long touted for big things, but frustratingly stuck at Level 3 on the refereeing ranks.

But today, a little more than four years on, the 30-year-old father-of-two will take charge of his first competitive game as a full-time Select Group 2 Championship referee after an astonishing rise into the higher echelons of the professional game.

From a £45 a match hobby, he is now working his notice as a PE teacher at Carr Hill High in Kirkham to take a full-time contract with the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) and is just one step from the biggest league in the world.

That rollicking has proved invaluable.

Leigh Doughty with his family, wife Lucie and children Martha (left) and Nellie (Mike Linnane/MPLphoto.co.uk)Leigh Doughty with his family, wife Lucie and children Martha (left) and Nellie (Mike Linnane/MPLphoto.co.uk)
Leigh Doughty with his family, wife Lucie and children Martha (left) and Nellie (Mike Linnane/MPLphoto.co.uk)

“I remember I was doing well on the line in the National Premier League and at the end of that season I had to choose between refereeing or being an assistant,” said Leigh, who lives in Freckleton with wife 
Lucie and children Martha, three, and five-month old Nellie.

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“I’d had conversations with my dad and then Barry sat me down after that game at Kendal and told me, ‘When you started refereeing what did you want to be?’. Before I could answer he said, ‘The man in the middle, so we’re going to get you promoted.’

“I had been too bothered about what games other referees were getting and where they were in the merit table. I had to focus on myself, my fitness, my diet and relax. And it worked.

“It’s crazy to think what has happened since with four promotions in four years. I just can’t wait to get going now, the Championship is something like the fifth biggest league in Europe.

“I’ve been asked if it was a tough choice to give up my teaching job but to be honest, while it will be emotional to leave, it was a no-brainer. School have been very supportive and I wasn’t expecting a full-time contract. But it’s been my dream for a long time to do this for a living so when I was offered it there was no real decision to make really.”

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It will be no gravy train though for Doughty, younger brother of former Blackpool and Bamber Bridge defender Phil Doughty.

As well as refereeing or fourth official duties up to twice a week, he will have to follow a strict daily fitness plan – he can be seen pounding the turf on Bush Lane in Freckleton first thing in the morning – and attend post-Covid fortnightly training camps at Loughborough where every key match decision will be pored over and analysed.

If he fails to perform, he will be removed – there is no hiding place.

His every move will be scrutinised, both from 
PGMOL chiefs, the media and the toughest of them all, the football viewing public.

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“As you go through the divisions you notice the scrutiny increases,” said Doughty, who will be joined on the Select Group 2 list by Michael Salisbury, from Penwortham.

“Clubs do their research on you, they know your previous games and what happened,” he said. “Fans have tried to follow me on Twitter, a Cheltenham fan got in touch before the play-off semi-final. I had to decline it. Social media is huge now but ultimately it’s just people’s opinions. Lucie appreciates that she’ll be exposed to it as well – she calls herself a RAG, like a football WAG but for refs!

“Joking aside she knows if something happens in one of my games then the abuse won’t be far away. It’s the way of the world. I’m lucky I’ve got such a close-knit family who help me avoid getting bogged down with any criticism.

“We have access to sports psychologists who help us but it’s up to me to park anything untoward and move on to the next game.”

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Today’s match sees him step out at St Andrews for Birmingham’s Carabao Cup clash with Cambridge United.

In the Covid era, he will have to travel to and from the Midlands alone, without his father-in-law Ian who has clocked up thousands of miles on the UK’s motorways alongside Leigh in recent seasons.

Such a game was only a pipe dream when a young Doughty first picked up the whistle.

“I was in Year 11 at Carr Hill and Phil had just made his debut for Blackpool – he was the footballer, I was never as good as him,” he said. “One of the sixth formers, Nick Croft, used to referee our school games and after one game I said to him, ‘How do you get into this then?’

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“I sat the referee laws test at Blackpool Referees’ Society, which Barry ran, and started doing lines on the West Lancashire League on a Saturday and then refereeing youth football on a Sunday.”

His first ‘middle’ was a baptism of fire.

“It was at AFC Fylde’s old ground at Kellamergh Park, it was the reserves,” said Doughty. “It was so tough, I was just this skinny kid and they were experienced footballers. I was a bit of a rabbit in the headlights. I had a yellow card for dissent but I got through it and got more confident with each game.”

Gripped by his new hobby, he would travel home every weekend from Liverpool John Moores University to referee.

But for the Doughty family, it was a period of contrasting emotions – as Leigh progressed, his brother’s own dreams of stardom would be slipping away.

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Phil, who had become the youngest player to represent Blackpool in the FA Cup aged 16 years and 93 days in 2002, had been on the receiving end of a horror tackle in a youth game that fractured both his tibia and fibula in his right leg.

“Phil was my role model,” added Doughty. “I loved going to watch him, I watched him every game. I used to get the autographs of all the youth team players.

“I remember when it happened – it was a Saturday morning, against Port Vale.

“He had been out injured and Colin Hendry wanted him to get some game time and some match sharpness so he started for the youth side. It was a horrible tackle.

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“He had a massive cast from his toe to his hip. The same surgeon who treated Djibril Cisse operated on Phil. It was a tough time – he was in his room a lot and it was tough to come to terms with the long rehab he would need. It’s hard to see your brother go through that.”

A multitude of loan deals at lower-league clubs came and went before Phil settled in non-league at Fleetwood, AFC Fylde and most successfully at Bamber Bridge. He retired this summer, age 33.

“Phil texted me when I found out I had been promoted to the Championship to say, ‘Class bro’,” said Doughty. “He’s always been curious about what games I’m doing – he’s never been a player to give the ref stick, but I don’t think that’s because of me.”

After Saturday’s Carabao Cup curtain-raiser, it will be league action as the Championship begins next weekend.

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At 4pm on Monday, his email will likely ping with the appointment that seemed an impossible scenario just four years ago sitting in that Kendal Town clubhouse.

“I’ll be refreshing my email no doubt from 3.55pm,” he said. “Games will be behind closed doors initially but hopefully fans will be allowed back as soon as possible. When you cross that white line, you don’t really notice what else goes on or the crowd. It’s just 11 v 11, Reds versus Blues, it doesn’t matter if it’s at Deepdale or Kendal. That’s the mantra that’s been instilled in me since non-league. I can’t wait to get going.”

FOLLOW IN LEIGH’S FOOTSTEPS

Blackpool Referees’ Society

Twitter: @BlackpoolRefs

Facebook: @blackpoolreferees

Preston Referees’ Society

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prestonreferees/

Twitter: @PrestonReferees

www.lancashirefa.com/referees

Lewis Smith – 01772 624000

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