Crossing A Line

This morning’s news that goal line technology could be used in the Premier League within the next 12 months is an interesting development.

Alex Horne, the General Secretary of the FA, made the announcement this morning, saying: It's possible we could see [goal-line technology] in the Premier League as early as 2012-13.”

Previously he had said that that such a move was “unlikely” before 2013 given that the technology wouldn’t be in place in time.

Along with Horne’s announcement, at which he also trotted out the usual phrases, such as “I think goal-line technology would be a huge boost for the game” and “For years we've thought this was a good addition to referees' armoury,” before adding: “It's easy to make mistakes and we've all seen examples where the referee and assistant referee can't see if a ball has crossed the line or not. We need to support them in decision-making.”

The problem is, I can’t help feeling, that the whole thing is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. How many instances of this would have been avoided over the years? There was the famous one at Old Trafford a few seasons ago when Roy Carroll dropped Pedro Mendes’ shot over the line, there was an incident last season with a last minute header at Stoke, and of course there was that “goal” that Frank Lampard scored in the World Cup against Germany.

The point I am making here is that there aren’t a lot of these incidents. It’s not exactly going to do a great deal to the game – and is it actually solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist?

Clearly the people behind the trials that are taking place don’t think so. Harry Barnes and David Parden have developed a system that involves a signal being sent to the referee’s wrist when the ball crosses the line. The system has been 14 years in the development, apparently after Bolton Wanderers went down as a result of a Gerry Taggart goal that should have counted not being given.

This neglects a very important point though and one which I believe still holds true. Bolton Wanderers did not go down in 1997 because one goal wasn’t given. Bolton Wanderers went down because their performances in the season as a whole weren’t good enough.

And the system isn’t cheap either. Costing £100,000 for a set of two goals. Self evidently therefore it is only going to happen in the Premier League. This creates a system where the game is refereed differently depending on how much money your team has. One of the things I love about football is that from the park to the pro’s the rules are the same. This changes that.

We already have something similar in cricket. In fact it is even worse. If I go and watch a cricket match in the T20 or Pro40 competitions and its on Sky they have a TV umpire who reviews decisions. If I go the next week and it’s not a televised game then there is no fourth official.

Surely it is even more wrong to have games in the same competition officiated differently then it is to have something uniform across the division, which is at least what will happen in the Premier League.

My other concern on this is that it might be the start of something bigger – how long before football follows rugby, cricket and tennis and brings in referrals for this, than and the other. I believe this to be entirely the wrong course of action for football to take and implore the authorities to think very, very carefully before making these nets compulsory

History Is Made

Referee Masaaki Toma made history at the weekend.

He took charge of the Brentford v Basingstoke Town game in the FA Cup and in doing so became the first non-British and Irish official ref an FA Cup match.

The Japanese man in black is over in England on an exchange programme for Referees and had taken charge of a Premier League Reserve game between Bolton and Sunderland and a Conference North game before turning up at Griffin Park.

Before the game David Elleray, who is now the Chairman of the FA’s Referees Committee said the usual PR guff: “Masaaki Toma is a world-class referee and his appointment shows that the FA Cup really does hold global appeal."

All very laudable. But is it fair enough?

At refereesjobs.com we think that yes it is – this exchange programme has got to be to the benefit of everyone. Stuart Attwell, the Warwickshire based Premier League ref, went the other way last year and would have benefitted from the experience too.
Unfortunately he hit the headlines while he was there on his three week stay – along with fellow young ref Anthony Taylor – and booked 18 players in his two games. But such exchanges have to be a good thing.

The Japanese Football Association are at the forefront of such things and have had Polish officials in their country in the last couple of years and perhaps it is something that we can also think about doing.

Surely rather like the old adage of a “change being as good as a rest” it can only benefit the Referee.

Anything that helps maintain the standards or of course even improve them has got to help before the dreaded talk about “Video Technology” kicks off yet again.

Of course Toma isnt some up and coming youngster looking for break. He refereed England v Mexico last year. By all accounts he did a fine job in the Brentford game – booking three players along the way.

He seemed to enjoy the FA Cup experience saying: “The majority of players and both
managers accepted my decision.

'Both managers said, "It was a great performance". However, some people also told me my English was poor.

In which case, in the Premier League he would fit right in!

Total Agreement - Surely some mistake?!

The thing about football is there is always a controversial incident every weekend – this week there was Howard Webb’s decision to give an indirect free-kick for a back pass, then to let Bolton take the free kick quickly and score. Howard isn’t afraid to take the big decisions so good luck to him, he is the best referee in the country for a reason.

Not everyone was pleased but that’s the nature of sport.

However, another issue occurred on Sunday and it resulted in the rarest of football phenomenon – almost total agreement.

As you will no doubt have seen Wigan’s Paraguay International defender Antolin Alcaraz has been banned for three games for spitting at Wolves player Richard Stearman.

And if we may be so bold that punishment isn’t enough.

In World Cup 1990 there was a vile incident which saw Frank Rijkaard spit at Rudi Voeller in a particularly nasty game. Jack Charlton was the Manager of The Republic of Ireland at the time and he was asked what he would have done if he had been spat at, he thought for barely a second and said: “I’d have chinned him, and I’d tell my players to do the same.”

I was reminded of those comments when I read what Wolves boss Mick McCarthy had to say about Alcaraz: "I only had it [being spat at] happen to me once and the player didn't come too close to me for a long time."

All of which goes to show the level of disgust that football people have for spitting. Bad tackles are unacceptable, of course, but at least it seems to be a legitimate football incident.

Joe Royle, the former Everton and Manchester City manager, was on TV a couple of years ago and he summed it up: “You see players getting sent off for kicking the ball away or taking their shirts off and you think to yourself ‘just chin someone, the punishment is the same.’

Now, it would be totally unprofessional of Referee-jobs.com to condone anyone hitting anyone, you sort of know what he means.

From our perspective the officials have a job to do and rules to enforce and they do that to the best of their ability, and it is not their fault – as we have discussed before on these blogs – if “common sense” cannot be applied.

But Referee Lee Probert didn’t see the spitting incident, and who can blame him? But maybe there is a case for saying that the FA could, perhaps, have come down harder on Alcaraz. In 1999 Patrick Vieira was banned for six games and fined £30,000 for spitting at Neil Ruddock for example, but the defender “accepted” his three game ban – and so he should too.

And one final thought. Latics boss Roberto Martinez has apparently apologised to Wolves on behalf of the club. Why hasn’t Alcaraz himself released a statement (if he has I haven’t seen it) wouldn’t just a little humility have gone a long way?

Sour Grapes and Gary Lineker

As you will know if you have read these blogs before, one of our pet hates at Refereesjobs.com is Manager’s who moan at referees.

The usual suspects were annoying me again last week: Tony Pulis launched an attack on Lee Probert after Stoke’s cup game with Liverpool. Villas Boas was still at it about Chris Foy in the QPR game a week before, Owen Coyle, after Bolton’s latest defeat at Swansea, tried his level best to deflect attention from his side’s awful start to the campaign by a rebuke of Mark Clattenburg and that before we even get to Steve Bruce, who probably wittered about “consistency.”

But the common denominator in the first three is that all their teams lost the game. And whether it was sour grapes or not, it doesn’t half look like it.

And quite apart from anything else, isn’t it extremely boring to listen to the same old nonsense?

I am sick to the back teeth, frankly of listening to these people drone on and on forever and a day, so in the spirit of “if you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem” allow Refereejobs.com to come up with what we think might be a reasonable solution.

Either we stop the post-match interviews or we stop Manager’s talking about referees totally.

If we go down the first route I honestly don’t think it would be a massive loss. What have we ever learnt from the after-match chat? Top Manager’s have pretty much never told us anything they didn’t want to (they call it mind games) and aside from the moaning at the officials who gave the other team everything or them nothing (delete as appropriate) all we ever get are the usual platitudes about how the fans-were-great-the-lads-worked-hard-it’ll-be-a-tough-game-next-week.

And if we go down the second route then perhaps in addition to the aural sleeping pill I mentioned above, maybe, just maybe we could elevate the debate to something about tactics, substitutions, team selection, players performance. I don’t know, but something interesting at least.

But no, what we’ll get is some nonsense on Match of the Day or 5Live, the same old boring rubbish. It’s got to the point where I watch MOTD half an hour behind so I can wind through it, and that way you can miss out what Gary Lineker has to say too.

See - it’s a plan that keeps on giving.

Yet More Stuff From The Madhouse

Blimey, what a week that was for refereeing issues. The Premier League quite rightly grabbed the headlines but the nonsense all started as Stoke City beat Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Referees-Jobs was at the game and was staggered by how poor Tel Aviv were. Even the sending off of striker Cameron Jerome didn’t alter the game. Indeed Stoke were so much superior to their opposition that, really they could have won with a 5 a side team.

It was disappointing then, that Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager, decided to waste his post match interview having a go at the referee Anastassios Kakos.

Kakos was a trifle officious and sent two players – the aforementioned Jerome and Tel Aviv’s Yoan Ziv, and Pulis said after the game: “"I didn't see a bad challenge all night - 24,000 fans have come to

watch tonight and you have to show some respect to them," added Pulis.

"I think we have to be very careful that we don't spoil what we have got in this country, which is honest competitive people, who want to make challenges.

"That is the big thing about professional football - it is a game of challenges.

"It is not netball, where you can stand off and try to stop them without touching them.

"If we take challenging out of the game, I don't think it will be anywhere near as good as it can be."

These comments were widely reported in the press, but neglected a couple of perhaps really important facts about the evening. Ziv was sent off for petulantly kicking his boot at the Assistant

Referee and Jerome was sent off for a second bookable offence.

The first booking that Jerome received was for dissent. In an ordinary Premier League game it probably would have been allowed to go, but once the referee has shown the yellow card you know that he won’t tolerate anything more. So less then 10 minutes later when the Striker elbows Ziv (there wasn’t a lot of contact but there was an elbow) he can’t have any complaints. And by the way, Robert Huth was booked for dissent in the second half, proving that sometimes, lessons just can’t be learnt. It just seems to be the default position of all Managers’ – blame the refs first, think later.

Two more were at it at the weekend. Andre Villas Boas is being investigated by the FA for his comments about Chris Foy after Chelsea v QPR. Villas Boas claimed that Foy hadn’t been fair (you will recall he had sent Jose Bosingwa off for a foul when he was last man and Didier Drogba received a red for a two footed lunge.) And Villa boss Alex McLeish - and Garth Crooks on Final Score - were incensed at Phil Dowd for giving a Penalty against Chris Herd, who was duly sent off.

This view of events also neglected the two really important facts. First it was Linesman Darren Cann, who essentially gave the red as he “saw” the foul and not Dowd. And second, you didn’t see Alex McLeish moaning the other week at

Loftus Road

when Villa were given a penalty that nobody apart from Ref Michael Oliver saw.

The first rule of these things is decisions often even themselves out over the season and the second is sometimes, just sometimes, players are in the wrong. And Manager’s would do well to remember that.

The Referee Is ALWAYS Wrong

At least this weekend the refereeing headlines were made by a different sport than football.

Sam Warburton it was, who was the victim of this years “injustice at a big sporting event” and was sent off in the early stages of Wales’ Rugby World Cup Semi final for what the referee, Alain Rolland, deemed to be a dangerous “spear” tackle. By common consent of the experts – and although at Referee-jobs.com we enjoy watching the sport we are far from knowledgeable about it, so we have to bow to their opinion – he didn’t mean to do it but it was a foul and the referee was in his rights to send the player off.

Cue the headlines elsewhere. A quick Google search on Warburton’s name brings up a poll on the Telegraph website. Where you can “Have YOUR say” on the matter. 69% of respondents think it was harsh, in case you are interested.

The professionals though, agreed that if the referee thinks he saw a “spear” tackle then the player has to walk. Mark Pougatch and Radio 5 tried to start some controversy and said something along the lines of, that’s the inconsistency, though, players did that elsewhere in the tournament and didn’t get sent off, with pundit Matt Dawson replying, “but those refs were wrong.”

It’s a good job the Rugby provided a talking point actually, because the football provided nothing really. The closest we got was a “did-he-didn’t-he” diving incident with Charlie Adam and a “should-he-shouldn’t-he” sending off with Rio Ferdinand for the same thing.

Referee Andre Marriner kept his card in his pocket, contenting himself to giving a free kick (from which Liverpool scored) and not giving Ferdinand a second yellow card and thus sending him off.

For what its worth, Referees Jobs does not think it was a foul. But that if the Ref sees one he probably should have produced a second yellow card. However, if Marriner had sent the England man off he would have faced a storm of criticism and been accused of spoiling the match. So he used the “common sense” that pundits are forever asking for – you know the same ones that moan about “inconsistency” as we have previously discussed.

Referee’s though – as we all know can never win. I will leave you with this from Saturday at the game I was at. A current England international had raised the crowd’s ire in the first half with about five fouls. In the second half the player was booked and the archetypal “bloke behind me” (except in this case he was next to me and my brother) screams “’bout time ref, you shoulda done that in the first half.”

Proving, in the process, two old adages: one, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it and two, the referee is always wrong, even when he is right – in fact, especially when he’s right.

Refs Are Being “Killed” Says Collina – And The TV Highlight’s Don’t Help!

Last week at the “Leaders In Football” conference Pierluigi Collina stuck up for his counterparts in the middle.

Referees, said Collina - still perhaps the most recognisable ref on the planet despite retiring six years ago –were being “killed every week” by excessive criticism.

"If you kill referees every week we can finish referees,” Collina said. "We need years to build up referees and one second to destroy them. To keep them we need to protect them.

"One of the things we have to consider is that we cannot buy referees at the supermarket.

"You cannot find referees in the corner of the street."

And it is a valid point.

Recent figures have shown that 98% of offside decisions made by the officials last year were right, but as former top ref David Elleray pointed out: “Two per cent of so-called mistakes attracted huge publicity.”

The point of view of Collina and Elleray was something that I was reflecting on when I watched the Football League Show on TV at the weekend.

There was footage on the show of the Colchester v Yeovil match. The game was poised at 2-2 going into the closing stages when Colchester sub Stephen Gillespie put the ball in the net.

The voiceover on the goals highlights said something like “and the goal was inexplicably denied for a foul on the keeper.”

Now, I couldn’t see a foul on the keeper either, but I did see a couple of Colchester players with their hands on their heads and no one protest as Gillespie was booked so I wound the incident back. And whilst a foul on the keeper might have been “inexplicable” (some would say non-existent) the handball by Gillespie was more than clear on second viewing.

Of course the referee didn’t get a second view. He got it right first time.

Which is really proof of Collina’s point. In the great scheme of things the piece was mere seconds of a late night TV show with a small audience. But unless you were eagle eyed (like the ref) or sad (like me) you wouldn’t have seen the handball and would have been left with the impression that the referee made a terrible – and costly – error.

And the TV must take some responsibility for this. No one is saying that the commentators or voiceover people can get it right first time every time – they – like referees – are only human.

But we do, as Collina said, expect far higher standards from Referees.

And it’s a good job we normally get them.

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