Match of the Day Tonight - Refereeing standards

edna krabappel said:

I'd have more sympathy with supposedly wronged players if they didn't devote so much of their energy to trying to con the referee into thinking they've been fouled, pushed, pulled, elbowed and such when they haven't been touched.

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Totally this.

I wish the media would spend a bit more time being critical of cheating players. And a bit less time getting one sided quotes from managers which they then use as factual evidence that there is something endemically wrong in the game.

Mourinho is using you folks......

Along with Edna's points I would add that what we (by we I mean pundits, the more vocal people complaining etc) want changes depending on what the referee does.

For years there has been a sentiment that "if you raise your arms in the box you risk giving away a penalty". While the law on deliberate handling did change, the spirit of it didn't really change, yet the first chance Chris Kamara had he was ranting at a couple of refs, both of whom gave penalties for handballs when the ball struck a raised arm. He spent several minutes highlighting how the rule says it has to be deliberate. That shoving your hands in the air wasn't enough.

Fair enough. If you going to take that attitude, fine. The rule did say that it had to be (in the opinion of the referee) 'deliberate', so be that picky. If it isn't deliberate, shouldn't be a penalty.

Except two weeks later there was an incident where Newastle scored - the ball was crossed in and I believe it was Demba Ba leaned in to head it, didn't connect, but the ball struck his arm and bounced in.

Kamara's first words "Now, I know it's not deliberate, but..." if I freeze the video on a the one single frame that shows contact with Ba's arm and the ball, and the ref is staring at it, he couldn't understand why the goal wasn't disallowed.

That one has stuck with me because it was so clear a contradiction.


But isn't just him. There are lots of contradictions from the people who drive the public discussion on football and thus influence what issues are deemed important (pundits, journalists, etc).

They want something eliminated so they suggest giving red cards, people will soon realise they can't do it. If refs start clamping down on something they claim if you send people off for that games will end 7 aside.

They want another referee to watch a video and advise the ref, yet the idea of adding officials to stand beside the goal means more refs involved = more mistakes (which, even without the contradiction of the first half of this point, is a weak argument. I one person is watching 22 players he will miss things, mistakes he makes will go unadvised - ignoring players who claim they never done nothin wrong guv - adding extra officials adds more eyes to catch things, and offer different view points to advise the ref from trusted neutral assistants)

We want officials to not rush to make a decision, we want them to wait and see if there is an advantage, but if they don't give something right away "finally the ref blows his whistle", "that's a late flag". We see an incident, the thousands of fans claim a foul, 9 players stop and turn and claim for a foul, the ref blows, and then we all notice that other player who has come out of nowhere to be in a great position and we criticise the ref for stopping the game.

We want refs to clamp down on swearing, yet, any action taken against swearing is moaned at for sanitising the game, it's a working man's game, industrial language is part of that!

And, or course the always there consistency v common sense demands, and the fans wanting strict enforcement of every rule against their opponents, with leniency and letting the game flow when their team is on the attack.

Watch soccer saturday and there are often disagreements among the former players/managers about what the right decision actually is. We suggest ex-players would make better refs, but this shows that there would still be inconsistency, still be decisions that others disagree with, etc.

There's also the issue I mentioned on last week's refereeing thread, that it's is part of society to criticise those that enforce the rules - Speed cameras are the demons, not the people who speed, ticket wardens instead of those parking illegally, referees instead of the players who break the laws of the game.


When you factor all this together, you start to get a picture that the problem isn't really referees, it's the coverage of the game, the attitudes or society, and the attitudes of football fans specifically.

The Hon Sec said:

I thought that there was an obvious head injury sustained at the start of that move which I thought the refs were supposed to act upon straight away. In which case he shouldnt have allowed play to continue. There was no return to show treatment of an injury so I suppose he got it right.

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Yeah I thought it looked like a bad head injury too but as nothing else more was mentioned he must have been ok! Brave call by the ref after what had already happened to Gomis in that game.