"OI! REF! Are you f**king well losing your f**king mind?" The shout drifts across the ground, clearly audible to the three spectators and the man taking his dog for a Sunday stroll. There is no danger that its intended recipient has missed it, or the previous two volleys which carried the same expletives, differently arranged.

Simon Howard, a cheery, overweight Londoner, reaches for the card in his top pocket, and, in accordance with Law 12 - foul and abusive language - this time the colour is red. The departing man rips his shirt off and hurls it at the touchline, from where he continues his tirade. "I had to do it," Howard grins later. "He'd already slaughtered me twice."

Who would be a ref?

In the small changing room at the Douglas Eyre Sports Ground, London €17, Dick Caylor, a Class One referee of 23 years and secretary of the Camden Sunday Football League, and the three Class Three referees from his panel - Howard, Eddie Osei and Martin Hudson - appear eminently sane, well-rounded and in full control of their faculties.

Outside is a nine-pitch battleground, a place of bouncing beer guts and jarring tackles, of sneaky elbows and loose teeth, of fat lips and big mouths.

This is British Sunday football in all its ragged glory and it is a remarkable sight. Young and notso-young men play with the received wisdom of the Premiership, with shouts of Adams-like exhortation and shrugs of Sheareresque innocence. The jargon is all in place, and they share one thing above all with their overpaid kin. They swear and sneer as the decisions go against them.

"You have to put up with a lot more aggravation on Sunday mornings," sighs Caylor. "You do get one or two who've had a goodnight out and they're still slightly inebriated. It's like driving. You think you're okay to drive, but you're not. You've got to be a bit thick-skinned."

Caylor has seen and heard the lot during his 23 seasons yet his philosophy is unshakeable. If the players want to play, he will keep them straight with a sensible word. If they want trouble, then they will find him as stern as a Singapore judge.

He has only once in his career faced an FA commission, which is convened when things get seriously out of hand and referees are forced into extraordinary action.

"I sent a guy off for kicking some one in the mouth on the floor. The goalkeeper was trying to get up and the centre forward was holding him down and then he just kicked him in the mouth. Of course, that sparked everything. I had the manager on, the physio on, everybody on. I cautioned them and reported them all. I didn't take any prisoners. There were about three or four minutes to go and it was mayhem. I thought, `I'm not going to abandon this, no way'. And it calmed down, and I finished the game. Some refs may have said `That's it, I'm off and out,' but that's not the way I referee. It's about character."

Caylor's three colleagues see refereeing as a way of staying involved with the game once their playing days were gone. Howard came to the forthright conclusion that he was "too fat" to keep playing.

"I will always own up to a wrong decision," Caylor confesses. "Players respect that. You can't try to cheat your way out of it. As long as you own up, I don't think you'll have any problems."

And yet Alcock's tiff with di Canio was only the least of the physical threats that can crop up. A referee's assistant was knocked out by a spectator at Portsmouth when he was surrounded by stewards and police. In the parks, where the ref is heavily outnumbered, the danger is more palpable. Feuds break out, things can get nasty.

"I have always felt safe. Some guys may not," says Caylor honestly. I don't feel threatened. Guys have been up to me nose-to-nose and I've said to them, `If you don't step back, you'll walk'."

Howard once abandoned a game involving a Turkish team for mass brawling, and all confess that in their early days they covered their timidity with cards.

"I was a bit nervous for my first game," Hudson says. "I sent off two, but I think now I probably wouldn't have. You try to stamp your authority in the wrong way."

There is an obvious camaraderie in the tiny refs' room. Just as the players have moans about refs, the refs have moans about players.

"They don't know the laws for a start," says Osei, who is that rare thing, a black official. "For example, you can't be offside from a goal kick. And I see defenders pushing up, shouting `Leave him, he's off'. He's not."

The four refs run out to face the masses and earn their match fee of £18. Eddie takes Constitution v British Library. Naturally, it is a quiet game. No cards. Dick issues one yellow during Camden Victoria v Palancas, this despite Palancas's one supporter telling me as a minor bout of push and shove breaks out that "They can fight like f**kers, these boys".

Martin shows yellow three times during North Road Lions v Greengate, leaving just Simon resorting to red during North London Olympians v Whitechapel Albion, a tense cup tie.

The card count is probably below that of four average Premiership games. The men in black are content.

"You know," reflects Eddie Osei, "only one thing has ever amazed me. I've been refereeing for four years, and never once have I been racially abused. This uniform says something to people. I really believe that."