Lee Mason's failure to show Glen Johnson a red card in the game against Man City on Wednesday was a real shame. A clear message from Chris Foy and the FA over two-footed tackles was watered down and confused by Mason's refusal to penalise Johnson when he flew in with a clearly dangerous two-footed tackle on City's Joleon Lescott.
It would be wrong to think that Vincent Kompany had been unfairly penalised for his foul on Man Utd's Nani on Sunday. It's Johnson who has got away with what should have been a three-match ban. He flew in at Joleon Lescott at much higher speed and again, with both feet off the ground and with his studs showing.
We all want referees to be consistent, and that's exactly what referees try to do. But it won't and can't happen. Let's look at why not.
Most obviously, Mason may not have had a perfect view of the offence. Fouls often look different from different angles. Another player may have crossed between Mason and the incident in the moment the foul took place - that's happened to me many times - or it's even possible that Mason blinked. It has been known.
But these are not excuses. One of his officials should have and indeed may have told him the challenge was dangerous, although I believe they were some distance from the action.
No, there's no way of escaping it, this was a mistake.
But I make the same point I've been making for many years. If football is to be run in the way it is, with a human being in charge, then there will always be contradictory and controversial decisions. Consistency is desirable and yet impossible to achieve. Some decisions are easy to make, others tough and some almost impossible,
But that's the way it is and there's little point in squeezing referees until they burst. It won't make then better.
3 comments:
Consistency might be hard to get - but explaining some of the decisions afterwards would be very easy to do. If it's a mistake, an unsighted ref or a different interpretation it would be nice to at least know.
No problem with explaining a decision. But at my amateur level that would just infuriate a manager who basically thinks I've got it wrong. At the top level, the fear is that TV channels just want to turn it into another chance to up the ratings with more confrontations. Referees used to talk to media much more than they do now, as TV gets in the way.
Its far too generic in my opinion to ask ‘refs’ to be consistent as, inevitably, some will consider certain challenges to be a foul where as others would not. There can surely be no argument that Johnson was fortunate to avoid a red card and Lee Mason did make the wrong decision. And if Lescott had come out of the challenge with a broken leg, the furore would be bigger still.
I believe it is far more essential to try to maintain a consistent standard of refereeing over 90 minutes.
What I struggle to understand is, regardless of what was and was not included in a referee’s match report, why Johnson was not retrospectively banned. The same questions will, no doubt, be asked this week if the situation arises with regard to the Balotelli and Parker incident and perhaps to a lesser extent, Lescott and Kaboul. Potentially, City could face Liverpool at Anfield on Wednesday without Balotelli and Lescott due to incidents that went unpunished by a referee who was handed the World Cup final in 2010, Howard Webb.
And regardless of whether a referee has a superb game or makes several big mistakes, they should always be supported by retried refs, not criticised by them in the paper the following day. No hint at Graham Poll at all there!
Post a Comment