By Graham Frankland
January 5 2006

I said MAN in the black - and is here to answer your questions and settle your arguments. Question one from Dave Masters, a Spurs season ticket holder with a question on the still raging debate on last month's Boro v Spurs game at The Riverside. Good assessment of the Spurs game on the whole. I thought the booking for Davids was inconsistant with other incidents. Defoe was behaving like a kid (but then he is not that old). Look at the foul count though as I think you will agree most of the fouls were not serious by Boro but there was a series of repeat offenders who were spoiling the game and it wasn't dealt with.

The Ref Says...

Thanks for that Dave. I do agree that the booking of Davids was harsh compared with others that went before and after the incident. I remember saying to my son at the time of his booking that really "he was getting Andy Reid's yellow card".

I say this because a few seconds earlier Reid had committed an extremely reckless challenge on a Boro player and with the crowd baying for his blood the Referee decided on a stern word instead. Immediately after the restart Davids committed a fairly innocuous challenge but this time a yellow was shown. The Davids challenge was nowhere near as bad as the one by Reid but I think the "stick" the referee had just taken by not booking Reid had a bearing on him producing the card for Davids.

The comment about repeat innocuous challenges is an interesting one from a refereeing stand point in that sometimes it is extremely difficult to pick up. This is especially so in a game littered with these type of offences from many different players, that in themselves warrant no more than an award of a free kick.

The law does allow a referee to yellow card a player for "persistent infringement of the Laws" and as such the referee will receive positive comments from his assessor if in fact he does detect an offender and punish him accordingly.

As a referee you would have to decide what is deemed to be persistent. What I would say is that a player who commits three or four offences in reasonably quick succession is much more likely to be punished than a player who commits offences in say the 1st, 36th, 68th and 85th minutes. Its just human nature, but try telling that to a player who feels aggrieved at receiving a yellow when other players may have escaped unpunished.

Question two from Mark Graves

Can you explain the tackling from behind rule. At the Spurs game, a player tackled Bates from behind sliding, between his legs to win the ball. Surely that’s an illegal challenge?

The Ref Says...

The general rule of thumb Mark is quite simply whether the challenge makes contact with the player before the winning of the ball. Players cannot simply come through the back of his opponent if he knows full well that by doing so he will more than likely make contact with the player and cause possible injury.

Fifa intoduced strict guidelines on this topic some years ago because they felt that skilful attacking play was being undermined by heavy handed defenders who had no interest in the well being of their opponents. Certainly since the introduction of the guidelines not only have we seen less of these career threatening challenges but a general improvement in the quality of defending that we see in today's game. Most defenders now stay on their feet a lot more and attacking play is generally allowed to flourish.

Question three from Danny Moss

How many different levels of referee are there in the game? How long would it take to get up to the standard where you can referee a world cup match?

The Ref Says...

Cheers Danny for that. Currently there are 8 Levels in the National structure of referees who can start refereeing from as young as 14 years old. After you have passed an initial exam on the laws of the game you are registered as a Level 8 Referee if you are 16 or under and Level 7 if you are over 16.

Your future promotions then depend upon your performances and on average I would say that it would take at least 8 years to reach the status of Level 1 Referee which would allow you to Referee in the Championship and ultimately after that in the Premier League. The ultimate status is to then be accepted on to the International List of Referees which would then enable you to referee in other countries.

To actually referee a World Cup match is a bit like the odds for winning the Lottery because it only comes around every 4 years and only one Referee from any country is chosen to officiate. At any one time in this country there are approximately 30,000 Referees so to be chosen to officiate at a World Cup is an almost impossible task to achieve but a great deal of enjoyment can be derived at all levels of the game for all budding Referees.

It just remains for me to wish all our members a very Happy New Year and enjoy your football.

Graham

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