I launched Who’s That Ref? at the end of March and genuinely had no idea what to expect. Building something is one thing. People actually using it is another.
In the first few matchweeks alone, the site had over 1,500 page visits. The Blue Room, an Everton podcast and pre-match show, picked it up and mentioned it twice to their audience. Fan channels from across the league started sharing it too. The Turfcast Podcast, Wolves Fancast, the 1865 Nottingham Forest Podcast, and others. By the end of those first few weeks the content had reached around 82,000 impressions on Twitter, entirely through fans sharing it with other fans. Every account that shared it, I’m genuinely grateful for.
What struck me wasn’t the numbers. It was what people did with the site once they were on it.
Fans weren’t just looking up their club. They were looking up their rivals. Comparing scores. Arguing about whether the methodology was right. Pushing back on results that didn’t match what they expected. One group of fans would find a low RPS and take it as confirmation of everything they’d suspected for years. Another set of fans from the same club would find the same score and question the whole premise.
That’s exactly what the site is supposed to do. Not hand people a verdict. Give them something real to have the argument with.
I’m a fan first. I just happen to be more interested in what the data says than most. That’s what Who’s That Ref? is – a fan’s attempt to bring some structure to a conversation football supporters have been having for as long as the game has had referees. The goal was never to build something clinical or authoritative. It was to build something useful, something that gives fans a better version of the argument they’re already having.
They just hadn’t had anywhere to look before.
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