Common Sense Previals

There were a couple of big talking points in last weekends football matches.

One you may well of seen. Ashley Cole’s tackle on Javier Hernandez, which caused tremendous consternation, with Alex Ferguson particularly scathing and the tackle to be fair, was pretty awful. There was much debate elsewhere about why, once Phil Dowd had given the foul and booked the player, a penalty wasn’t given.

This one is easily sorted. In the referee’s view the ball had gone out of play so a penalty couldn’t be given in those circumstances.

But the media doesn’t want easy explanations so the conjecture has continued over the last couple of days.

The second incident has occupied far less column inches, but did cause consternation on the football phone ins. One caller to Radio5live’s 606 show was particularly exercised by it.

Basically, what happened was that in the Yeovil Town versus Sheffield Wednesday match, referee Brendan Malone gave a drop ball. The ball was punted up field by a Yeovil player towards the goal. The Wednesday goalie and centre back got in a bit of a tangle and The Glovers striker Kieran Agard ran onto the ball and tapped it in the net.

All hell broke lose apparently, with Ref Malone taking five minutes to re-start the game. The whole incident was a little un-edifying.

Apparently Town boss Terry Skiverton did contemplate allowing Wednesday to score from the kick off (precedent had been set for this, ironically enough, at Yeovil when a player in the same situation mistakenly found the net in a game against Plymouth in 2004) but said he didn’t after the antics of Sheffield’s Jose Semedo annoyed him: “I was [thinking about] letting them run through but their No 6 is a silly boy and came over and effed and blinded at me,” said Skiverton. “For him to come over like that, I am not going to do him any favours, I thought that it was really rude, to be honest.

“From my point of view, there was a mistake before that.

“Had Kieran gambled on it, gone clean in and scored, we would have let them score. But as there was a mistake, I was contemplating, but when their lad comes over and calls me those names, I am not going to do him any favours.”

Crucially, Skiverton added: “The referee has played it how he has seen it, he has let the goal stand. Some of the players are going to be frustrated, but one thing we are not going to do is allow other players to come over and bully us into doing something.”

The key in that sentence is “the referee has played it how he saw it.” And exactly what the referee was supposed to do I am not sure. A goal was scored from open play.

There were, perhaps, some parallels between that incident and the recent test match between

England and India. That day, if you recall, Ian Ball was run out while wandering off for tea. India appealed and the Bell was given out before being re-instated after the Indian team had a meeting over the interval.

No laws had been broken, India were perfectly within their rights to appeal and the umpires, in those circumstances had no choice but to give him out – just as Agard was perfectly in his rights to score and the ref had to give it on Saturday.

The only difference was in the cricket case common sense prevailed and football has never had too much of that!

The common denominator, though? The officials were spot on.

And at http://www.referee-jobs.com/ we wouldn’t want it any other way.