Wisey's Words: Blues Blog
Referees are certainly getting their fair share of publicity at the moment. Rightly or wrongly, they seem to be getting more column inches than the match facts themselves.
The FA have initiated this new ‘Respect the Ref’ campaign which they hope will give their officials a bit of a break from players, managers and anyone else who chooses to disagree with that last minute penalty decision when the opposing player clearly didn’t touch Ronaldo in the box.
Pompey boss Tony Adams is a very laid back, relaxed and open minded individual. He’s made it patently clear that referees have a tough job and he’s not prepared to start getting involved in the current ‘Refs – Are they good enough’ debate.
Fair enough. It will probably help us in the long run if we aren’t one of the sides that referees are always looking to punish.
However, how can anyone begin to respect referees when they aren’t being respected by their own governing body?
Take the recent incident involving young official Stuart Attwell. His linesman made a ricket at Watford, signalled a ball had crossed the goal-line and he duly gave the goal. Yes you can argue that he should have positioned himself better to be able to over-rule the decision. But you would trust an experienced lino to be able to tell whether a white spherical object had crossed a line obscured by a net wouldn’t you?
So what do the FA do? Make an example of him by taking him off the Carling Cup game he was due to take charge of the next week and ensure he doesn’t officiate a top flight game for a few weeks.
His first game back in the Premier League is this weekend by the way. Pompey against Hull City if you want to see a confidence sapped 25 year old dressed in green.
And then there was fellow ref Mark Halsey. He recently sent-off Chelsea’s John Terry against Man City for rugby tackling a player to the ground. That decision was over-turned by Referee Chief Keith Hackett despite Mr Halsey’s strong views on maintaining he made the correct call.
What happens to Mr Halsey? He finds himself at the Deva Stadium looking after Chester against Shrewsbury 7 days later.
Two glaring errors as far as I’m concerned.
Firstly, how on earth does taking them off Premier League games help the matter in the slightest? Surely it just highlights to everyone the fact they’ve made an error and aren’t up to the job.
And secondly, if they are apparently ‘not good enough’ to officiate in the Premier League, why should the Football Leagues have their cast-offs? That seems farcical. If they FA don’t want them taking charge of top flight matches, give them a weekend at home to think about what they’ve done. Don’t them go and send them to Chester because the standard of reffing doesn’t matter so much at that level.
Perhaps the FA will soon learn that the root of the problem may very well lie at their own doorstep.
