Sunday 29th March 2015.
Very early start today - 6:30am infact ... as we had a referee meeting at the Crowne Plaza hotel at 7am ... to go through tournament rules and regulations.
After this, it was time to make our way to Richland College, which has 10 state of the art football pitches. I watched numerous colleagues officiate their first games of the tournament, and soon realised the temperature was fast reaching 100 !
At 1pm, it was time for Peter Bankes, Rob Jones, Josh Few and myself to make our way to the 90,000 seater CottonBowl stadium in Dallas for our opening ceremy game between Valencia and Tigres. As explained in my previous blog, it is truly an honour and privaledge to officiate on this game.
The game went fantasically well. It was the first time i had used Communications kits, and I also used vanishing spray. The atmosphere was electric, with over 10,000 people at the stadium. I had butterflies, as i knew that the likes of Howard Webb, Keith Stroud and Dave Allison were all sat in the crowd, along with my friends and family watching the live stream at home.
It was a fantastic experience, one of which i will never forget. The feedback i got from the select group referees, also Howard and Dave was second to none.
My legs are sore and i am very tired, so that calls for an early night ahead of 3 games tomorrow.
Mike B.
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