TE PUKE UNDER-11 REF DOWNS WHISTLE MID-GAME, CITES "SCHOOL PICKUP" AND "NOT BLOODY PAID FOR THIS"

A volunteer touch ref at a Te Puke domain walked off the field with eleven minutes left on the clock on Thursday afternoon. He cited a 3pm school pickup and "the worst sideline I've copped since May".

The ref, Glen Murchison, 44, blew time off, jogged to his Hilux, and reversed out of the carpark while parents on the eastern sideline were still mid-bollocking. The under-11s game was left at 14-all. No official, no result, one ball slowly rolling toward the long-jump pit.

"I've got two kids at the school gate and a wife who finishes at quarter past," Murchison told The Daily Yarn from his ute. "Some tosser in a Hot Pools hoodie spent twenty minutes telling me I didn't know the ruck rules. Mate, there's no ruck in touch. Get fucked."

A sideline mum, Raewyn Coombes of Papamoa, said it had been feral since the warm-up. "One dad called the ref a munter before the first whistle. Another bloke was carrying on like a pork chop about the sin-bin being too soft. They're ten, love."

The club's junior convenor said volunteer refs were "increasingly hard to keep" and the club was looking at issuing sideline parents with "a second yellow, possibly a verbal trespass". Asked who reffed the last eleven minutes, she said: "Nobody. They just kept playing. Someone's nan called full time."

Murchison has not committed to next Thursday. The Hot Pools hoodie dad is, per witnesses, already in the carpark warming up.