Mark Clattenburg, a relatively new addition to the elite panel of referees plying their trade in the premiership, has the ability to become one of the world's best. He showed just why at the weekend with a stunning piece of spontaneous refereeing that broke most of the rules of refereeing but which was stunningly successful.
The immensely fit northeasterner, who never seems to be more than 10 metres from the action, spotted Aston Villa's Luke Young and Birmingham's Mehdi Nafti going nose to nsoe with each other as Birmingham broke on one of their rare attacks. Clattenburg set off in pursuit of play and, as he ran past the two protagonosts, simply shoved Nafti backwards and kept running. Nafti got the hint and quickly got himself in position for a shot, the incident was defused, play carried on at a fine pace and no-one had to be shown a card.
Wonderful refereeing.
Or at least you'd think so until one of the whinging MOTD "analysts" decided Clattenburg's actions may have affected Nafti's concentration. What a bunch of twaddle. So his concentration on the game wasn't affected by picking a fight with Young?
Never mind. Clattenburg may not get too many official plaudits for his action - after all we're not actually supposed to make any form of physical contact with players - but every lover of football should applaud his desire to see football as the winner.
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