PR should not stand for Putrid Refereeing

Mick Dennis13 April 2012

Graham Taylor said recently: "The trouble with referees nowadays is that they know the laws but don't understand the game." To which everyone who has bothered to do a refereeing course, pass the exam and face the challenge of controlling a match will reply: "The trouble with people in football is that they know the game but don't understand the laws."

Thus, both sides sit in their trenches, festering with resentment about each other.

Referees seethe with anger about the constant criticism they suffer and the profound ignorance shown towards what they have to do. Football people, who assume anyone who wants to referee is a sad knob anyway, fume with fury about what they perceive to be poor decisions and officious attitudes.

But try playing your next Sunday-morning match without a ref and, as you sit in the ambulance or the police cell later, you'll realise that football cannot survive without them.

Believe me, the idea of giving up precious time to be sworn at and ridiculed is becoming less and less attractive.

I spent my Sunday morning trying to keep two teams of hormonally-unbalanced adolescents from kicking each other and, exasperated beyond endurance by the perpetual questioning of my motives and competence, eventually booked the two stroppiest culprits.

Afterwards, as I tugged a soggy tracksuit over my muddy, weary legs, I ruminated on how things have deteriorated in recent years. Encouraged by seeing and hearing managers, pundits and illinformed reporters constantly carping about referees, all players believe that all refs are the enemy.

As I squelched into my car, a parent asked: "Did you enjoy that?"

I explained that "enjoyment" wasn't the emotion welling up inside me at that particular moment, and he said: "Well, you must enjoy it or else why would you do it?"

Why, indeed? All youth leagues and adult leagues at the bottom of the game are short of refs because more of them are asking that question and not coming up with a convincing answer. As fewer referees start at the bottom, the quality of those who work their way towards the top must become worse.

Something must be done and, uniquely for this column, I have an idea about what can be done.

Premiership and Nationwide referees must hire a Press Relations firm (my wife's company would take the account) and start getting their point of view across, instead of sitting in what they believe is dignified silence nursing their grievances.

They could start by making sure someone articulate and, above all, informed is available to go on Match of the Day, Six-O-Six, Sky's Super Sunday and the rest to explain why a referee has done whatever he has done.

The PR person could point out, for starters, that repeatedly demanding that referees should be consistent is both meaningless (because no two incidents are precisely the same) and damaging. It was this banging on about the need for consistency which led to referee Steve Bennett behaving like a jumped up, petty jobsworth when he sent off Wycombe's Steve Brown.

Wycombe had just scored the injury-time goal which had created one of the FA Cup's most sensational stories and, completely understandably, were celebrating like loonies. Brown whipped off his shirt to show the vest on which he had written the name of his son, Maxwell. Bennett booked him and, because he had taken his name earlier, sent him off.

Bennett was not to know that Maxwell had battled through 20 operations or that his dad would pose with the sweet little boy in the next day's papers, making the referee look like an insensitive moron. But he should have been able to use discretion and common sense and to have a quiet word with Brown instead of brandishing the cards.

Yet if he had done that, what would happen this weekend if someone else is booked for taking off his shirt?

I'll tell you what would happen. The player, the manager, phone-in hosts, supporters and football writers would all harp on about the lack of consistency.

What should have happened after the Wycombe farce is that a referee's PR should have quickly explained on TV and radio that the rule about not being able to take off your shirt in celebration is a daft rule and is soon to be revoked but that, until it is, it is silly to get cross with referee Bennett, who was only trying to be consistent.

Instead, poor old Bennett was left vulnerable and unsupported while the whole media went on the attack and, until Standard Sport telephoned the Football Association on Monday, nobody bothered to point out the hopeless, hapless position he had been put in.

It really is time that someone went on the offensive on behalf of referees, before we all find the whole business too offensive to bother with.

My beef with football's new 'transfer' system

She invited questions from the audience and the first two set the tone for the session.

The first inquiry was: "How do you think football's smaller clubs will be affected by the new transfer system?" The second was: "How do you cook beef shin?"

Delia dealt with both expertly, although it was a pity the second query was not about how best to serve turkey, because then she could have fielded both the football and the culinary question with a single word: "Stuffed."

Having had time to digest the UEFA communiqué on the new system, I can reveal it is entirely unpalatable.

Except if you are a player. If you are a professional footballer, then the new system is scrumptious.

Here's how it will work for you, if you are a footballer.

You sign a contract for as much dosh as you can screw out of the club. They will want a five-year contract, but you will want to move again much sooner than that.

Don't fret - five years doesn't mean five years.

If you're under 28, you can tear up the five-year contract to join another club after three years. If you're over 28, you can walk out of your contract after two years.

Football has devised the only formula known to man in which five equals two or three. There will be no penalties or sanctions.

But you don't even have to stay for two or three years if you don't want to hang around that long. You can walk out before that, although if you do there will be sanctions - but nothing you can't handle.

The authorities will ban you for a few months, but your new club will look after you while you're kicking your heels instead of kicking a ball.

And if you don't want to be banned, fear not. There are plenty of scams you can pull.

You are entitled to walk out at any stage without punishment if you play in less than 10 per cent of first-team games. You can always contrive a loss of form or pick a quarrel with the manager, can't you? And, thanks to what must be the craziest clause in the whole sorry mess, you are entitled to walk out if you are played out of position.

Clubs have always used players "out of position". Tottenham made Steffen Iversen, normally a central striker, perform emergency duties wide and deep on the right against West Ham at the weekend, but under the new system, they won't want to do that too often, or Iversen could bleat about unfairness and walk out of his contract.

This insane clause will kill one of football's best-loved clichés. At the moment, we say: "Good players can play anywhere." We'll have to change that to: "Good players only play where they want to."

So the new system is hunky dory for the players. They'll flit about from club to club, trousering a wedge from every move.

But little clubs, as I say, are stuffed. In fact, like turkeys, they'll be disembowelled by the new system, although there are no plans to put their giblets in plastic bags and stuff them up their backsides. Not yet, anyway.

Transfer fees are being replaced by "compensation" the main point of which is to recompense clubs for training youngsters. But it takes no account at all of whether players become exceptionally good or just quite good.

If a little club train two kids, one an average squad player and one a genius, the little club will get precisely the same compensation for both of them when they walk out to join a Premiership club.

So smaller clubs who have survived for eons by collecting massive fees for the occasional gems they have unearthed and polished will have to rethink their policies and their budgets.

Okay, so you've all read doom-and-gloom prophecies about smaller clubs before, but they all manage to survive somehow and football goes on, doesn't it?

Yes, of course, and this new transfer system (or non-transfer system) won't drive small clubs into penury overnight.

But it will damage them and it will erode the structure of the professional game from the bottom up.

It will kill small clubs just like Delia said you should cook beef shin. Slowly.

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