By Scott R
December 2 2006

The premier league season is literally only a matter of days old but the early season games have thrown the quality of officialdom into the spot light already.

(Note: This article was written on the 25th August - Sorry for delay)

Dodgy decision making has already cost likely relegation battlers Sheffield United two points against a Liverpool team that will be supposedly challenging for the title. Fellow battler Watford were similarly robbed of a point following what can only be described as a baffling decision to award a penalty for hand ball in their opening fixture against the blue half of Merseyside.

On a brighter note it was amusing to see the third newly promoted side on the opposite end of an official blunder when their opponents from the North East (of Yorkshire) watched a Marc Viduka goal incorrectly ruled out for offside, granting the Reading men a lucky two points in a closely contested game.

Outside of the Premiership lady luck decided to shine on Liverpool again in what should have been an embarrassing exit from the Champions League qualifying stages with Israeli side Maccabi Haifa suffering a similar fate to Middlesbrough (only this time it was no where near as funny).

This is to say nothing of the numerous decisions that proved not to be game ruining decisions on the day, at least as far as we can tell in hindsight.

What absolutely clinches it, as far as I’m concerned, is what can only be described as the assault by Ben Thatcher on Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes. An assault which left the Portsmouth player in need of medical attention and will seem him ruled out for at least a week as he undergoes neurological supervision after being knocked out cold. Portsmouth fans have the right to be absolutely incensed with both the initial attack and the baffling decision of otherwise “better than most” referee Dermot Gallagher to only books the player and not send him off. A decision which (under FA rules) means that the issue is now done and dusted and only the Police and Crown Prosecution Service can decide to take it further unless Mendes himself decides to sue (and perhaps he should). Pure insanity in this day and age when Sky cameras grace every premiership game and the technology to provide replays, instant or not, is available to any authority who wants them.

Same old, same old as far as match officialdom goes. It hasn’t noticeably improved during the time I’ve been watching football and given the mirrored lack of quality and common sense in the upper echelons of places like FIFA and the FA it seems highly unlikely to improve anytime in the near future.

You’ll hear any number of trite phrases concocted by the media, fans and pundits to make this truth more palatable but not one of them holds any water with me. Some people will tell you it provides a talking point but why on Earth would we need anymore of those? Just look at what’s going on around us! We have eternal comedy club Sunderland FC carrying on their form of last year, crashing to five defeats in a row including a cup exit to the bottom team in the football league merely weeks after being promised by a pantomime horse that he will waken the sleeping giant (my sources tell me that many in Sunderland took this literally and nearby motorways were crowded by residents’ horses and carts as they attempted to flee the city with their meagre possessions). We then have the Sunderland faithful promised a “world class” manager and then offered an individual who hasn’t even managed a Sunday league team and who spent his entire (admittedly glorious) playing career over reacting to the slightest provocation while biting both the hand that fed him and the hand that wiped his backside. Simply inspiring stuff!

Failing that we can talk endlessly about our own club. We could congratulate Roeder on engineering a rare opening game win and for the capture of the mercurially talented Damien Duff from Chelsea and Nigerian hit man Obefami Martins from Inter Milan. We could congratulate Roeder and the team for ensuring the sterling work they produced at the end of last season has not been wasted after booking our place in the UEFA cup proper. We could congratulate Freddy Shepherd who, in the past, has been guilty of jerking his knee more often than a Morris Dancer on Speed, but has never the less backed his manager with transfer funds as he has so done so consistently. Credit where credit is due and this article could be waxing lyrical about anyone of those things instead of taking this negative course.

If we reject the need for blunder caused talking points what’s next? Well, some people tell you that it evens out over the season. That one makes me cringe even writing it down, never mind hearing it in earnest for the umpteenth time.

There are two underlying assumptions behind this explanation. First, that errors when they occur are random and not caused or inflamed by the cheating culture more prevalent in some clubs than others or the cheating nature of certain unnamed players who appear to die in horrible agony at least ten times a game before making a Lazarus like recovery when the decision goes their way or play is waved on (they certainly aren’t booked for play acting nearly as much as they should be).

It also relies on the idea that these “random” events of equal probability will distribute evenly over a 38 game per team season. Unfortunately, and mathematically speaking, this is only certain as the number of incidents approaches infinity and although mistakes are relatively frequent there aren’t that many and the timing and circumstances of each renders them a unique case when determining just how important or unimportant they are. The simple fact is that you are far, far more likely to have teams suffer significantly more than others. That will be the only nerdy paragraph in this piece. I promise. Possibly.

So if we don’t need talking points and blunders aren’t random then what does that leave us? Scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel often throws up “Well those referees have a hard job” as if this has any relevance what so ever. Premiership referees are very well paid professionals involved in a sport that many of us would sacrifice a testicle to be part of. Their financial compensation is excellent, consultant doctor excellent and when they make mistakes people die. Maybe its just me but the burden of living with that kind of responsibility seems slightly worse than having a few hundred thousand supporters cursing your name for a few weeks. That’s merely scratching the surface though because the true culprits are the men behind the scenes. The faceless officials at the FA and places like it who avoid all their odium that results from their bizarre rules and rulings. They damn well DON’T have a hard job but choose to spend their time having affairs with dodgy looking “manwoman” secretaries and making rubbish choices for England manager. Allegedly.

While individual referees frequently make rods for their own backs the officials who make and enforce the rules are the only ones who can lead the game in the right direction. They have to learn, they have to embrace technology that has been available for years and trial methods for introducing them into a game so the transition is as smooth as it can be. Referees must be allowed to act like human beings with independent decision making capacity even if it sometimes seems like they are not. Most importantly of all they should face the millions of fans after the game and explain why they made the decisions they did, the entire process needs to be transparent and the governing bodies need to be accountable instead of acting like a latter day Gestapo; fining managers with the temerity to speak up in criticism as they watch their jobs fall under threat through no fault of their own. Hundreds of thousands of pounds if not millions of pounds are at stake in PL games these days and we absolutely need the FA to play their part instead of merely siphoning off the cash.

We can all accept that referees will never be perfect but the standards are well below attainable levels and that is unacceptable. The men in black do, in fairness, put themselves under the spotlight and they want to get things right but its not like they routinely have to save Earth from invasion by technologically superior aliens is it?