Category: Sport

The news sites (remember the days when it was “papers”?) are full of recent reports of football referees being criticised by players and – in particular – managers. At the start of the season, the FA launched a campaign called “Respect” in a bid to get managers to talk nicely to the chaps in green/black/whatever. I’m not sure of the details, but it likely consisted of a list of big fines one could receive for saying anything nasty to or about them.

Now I’ll first of all side with the refs. I know they have a difficult job. I can only imagine how hard it is to keep up with the flow of play in a professional game, and have a view of everything that happens. I completely understand that mistakes will happen.

And yet I’ll be amongst the first to scream abuse at the TV screen when one of the blind ******** mistakes an obviously fair challenge for a foul and waves a card. Or misses a blatant shirt-pull and lets someone off who he shouldn’t. Or fails to send Roy Keane immediately out of the stadium for being a ****.

The thing is,  like everyone else, referees will sometimes have a shitter. Unlike everyone else, the people who they screw over aren’t allowed to comment on this. The only people who can criticise referees are the public (as if the FA cares), the press (who write anything to sell to their target market) and the FA themselves (who never seem to do anything about anything if they can avoid it).

Players can’t do it. Managers can’t do it. And these are the people who’s careers can be affected by results. Why shouldn’t Joe Kinnear call Martin Atkinson a “Mickey Mouse” referee? Atkinson was very poor on Sunday and I feel cost us two points with two bad decisions. He doesn’t hold a candle to Rob Styles, muppet of the first order, who at least apologised for being a **** and rescinded a red card that should never have been. Do we get our two points back that we should have won, though? Do we ****.

If a player has a bad day, does the PFA insist that managers aren’t allowed to utter a word against them? Nope. So why are referees protected? You have a bad game, expect criticism. You have a good one, expect praise. Have many good ones, and earn respect.

(P.S. Howard Webb used above for illustrative purposes only – he’s no worse than the rest of them. OK, maybe a bit worse)