Several poor offside calls may have sealed Kirkup's fate

I've just reviewed our recording of the Croatia vs Italy game here at the International Broadcast Centre in Warsaw and I think I've got to the bottom of the reason for Peter Kirkup's departure from the team of English officials at Euro2012.

In the course of the game he made at least three, possibly four faulty decisions, mainly involving offside. Compared to Mike Mullarkey on the other line, the decisions seemed to eat into Kirkup's confidence and he looked anxious. At least once, Howard Webb seemed to be leading the way with throw in decisions while Kirkup hesitated. A top match official, I suspect Kirkup suffered a bout of nerves that affected his performances.
The first problem was hardly his fault. An Italian defender and a Croatian attacker tussled in the area and it seemed to me that a penalty could easily have been awarded to the Croatians by Howard Webb. Instead, Kirkup flagged for an offside that, on review, was not.
For the rest of the game, Kirkup made three errors on very close offside decisions, all of which were measured in inches. In the blink of an eye, correct decisions become mistakes. None of them led to a goal or to nay strong reactions from the victims. But they were mistakes nonetheless.
It's acceptable if I make these mistakes in the Kent County League, but not at the level. These guys are good enough to get these calls right. While I sympathise, I also agree that UEFA is dead right not to make the whole refereeing team suffer for one official's mistakes.