Portsmouth's most recognisable referee and in October a player was handed a five-year ban after assaulting him during the game. (The assailant pleaded guilty and FA oversaw the case, with written reasons in the public domain)
Bunny has been refereeing locally for almost 26 years, everyone has been booked by him!
Bunny has been refereeing locally for almost 26 years, everyone has been booked by him!
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NewsTranscript
00:00My name's Adrian Redding. I'm also known as Bunny.
00:04No one really knows my real name in football.
00:06Everybody in Portsmouth or surrounding areas knows me by my nickname.
00:10I've got this method of the way I refer.
00:13I've been refereeing for 26 years nearly now.
00:15I've got a method of my cards, the way I use them.
00:18I carry a yellow book when I'm cautioning a player
00:22because I've got their names down or I need to write their name down.
00:24I write it in a book, show them the yellow card book like that
00:27or the cards like that and place it back in my pocket.
00:30If it comes to a red card incident, I then go to my top pocket
00:34and I pull out a black book which has got two cards in it as you can see, yellow and red.
00:38I then take the player's name.
00:40He doesn't know what card he's going to receive.
00:43Then what I do, I place it in my back pocket
00:45and I go back to my back pocket and I pull a red card out.
00:49That's a bit of a surprise to a player but that's the way I refer
00:53and that's the way I've done it for all the time I've been around here.
00:57That has led to some incidents and a particularly famous one in September.
01:03Could you tell us a little bit about that one?
01:05Basically, I was refereeing a game of football.
01:07The league, they're rolled on and rolled off subs
01:10so the guy that's been off, he'd come back on again, been off, come back on again.
01:14The second time he'd come on, he never had no chimpanzee.
01:17It was brought to my attention by a player.
01:19The ball was out of play anyway so I didn't need to stop play.
01:23I instructed the player to leave the field of play to put his chimpanzee on
01:26and was prepared to wait for him to come back on.
01:28However, he was walking slowly off the pitch.
01:30I asked him to hurry up because we had a game to finish.
01:33He then fell on the floor on the rink, faking an injury.
01:36I then cautioned him for delaying the restart of play.
01:40He then jumped up, he pushed me in the face, finger wagging, swearing
01:45and he hit me in the stomach.
01:47I then pulled the red card out so I didn't get his name on there
01:50or get his name after.
01:51He hit me in the stomach again.
01:53By that time, there was a number of players around me pulling him out of the way.
01:58He then left the field of play and continued to abuse me from the sideline
02:01which I didn't hear.
02:03It was reported to me by another referee.
02:07The next time I got seriously assaulted was here at goals.
02:11A player was swearing on the field of play.
02:14As he continued to swear, I had no option but to send him off.
02:18He said, if you do send me off, I'm going to kill you.
02:21In not such absurd words.
02:23So I sent him off and he picked me up by the throat, squeezed my throat
02:27and I was on the floor trying to get my breath back, basically.
02:34That was scary, that was really scary.
02:37Would you see yourself ever getting out of there other than refereeing?
02:41No, I would continue refereeing.
02:43Even after the last time I got assaulted, I'd come home and I sat down
02:47and done my caution reports and my misconduct reports, send-off reports
02:52had my dinner and went out the next week and refereed a game of football.
02:57There's been times in my career of football that I've come home,
03:01chucked my bag in the corner and said, that's it, I'm not going out again.
03:04Picked it up the next week and gone out for another game.
03:07That's the way it is.
03:09I've been locked in dressing rooms, I've been chased around parks.
03:14There was one occasion that, it was a situation where I sent a player off
03:20and the whole team come for me and I run off the pitch, got in my car
03:24and drove off, still with my football boots on.
03:28And then chased him around the corner.
03:30Yeah, that was quite a few years ago.
03:32They never got to me, they just chased me.
03:37I was too fast for them. I was a lot younger then.