First things first though. I’m not writing this to back up every single referee decision that is made this season. I’ll try and give factual reasons why an offence is a yellow or red card, how referee’s are asked to interpret the laws of the game, the positioning of the officials when the offence is committed, the role of the asst. referee (and now the 4th official) and give an honest opinion.
One thing that I’ll never be able to change is the thought that a referee deliberately goes out to favour another team..i.e. the Old Firm. A mistake is a mistake, the refs at the top of their game have worked too hard to get where they are to throw it away by blatantly giving decisions that TV will prove to be incorrect. There is no hiding place these days with TV, they’ll get scrutinised and castigated by every paper in the land and with referees having ‘professional’ roles outside of the game their credibility will start to leak into their livelihoods.
Too many mistakes and they’ll never progress, years of training to get to the top and then throw it all away. Sorry to spoil the thought but every single decision, yes even that dodgy throw in, is marked down by the SPL assessor in a points based system. Get too many small things wrong and the mark goes down, and get a howler and you’ll be given a ‘rest’. Decisions are given in an instant, there is no time to ‘cheat’...unless you’ve been in that position then I don’t think that you can fully contemplate that from a fans perspective. I never did.
So onto this weekend just passed...
Joe Cole sending off V Arsenal
A classic example of what referee’s are being asked to ensure is a straight red card. The arguments against it being red I’ve read, and guessed, that it wasn’t two footed, he isn’t that type of player, he was looking at the ball and the Arsenal player made the most of it.
In these situations the question you’ve got to ask yourself was Cole ever in control of himself the moment after he left the ground to tackle the full back? the answer is 'No'. Not a chance could Joe Cole ever control himself mid flight and the only thing that was ever going to stop Cole was when he made impact into the defenders leg.
There is nothing in the laws about using two feet, taking into account the type of player he his nor what actually happened to his opponent or if he played the ball first.
Shirt pulling in the box in the SPL
I think there were 3 (Nish, Killie, Hartley) penalties given at the weekend for tugs on shirts, this is another one of the things that used to constantly annoy supporters when they used to see no action being taken (as they maybe were dismissed as being a ‘soft’ penalty by the referee) but there will be a quite significant increase in awards of penalties to try and stamp out this out in the next few months to endorse the message that has been sent to every club in Scotland.
Throughout the season I'll try to post up on what's happened the previous weekend and will attempt to give an opinion on why a referee came to that decision.
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