As someone who watches a lot of football over my 50+ years of life, I've seen my fair share of poor officiating. Along with fans up and down the country I've screamed at the telly, imploring officials to see what we've seen. From the "little" incidents (handballs, little trips/kicks) to the "big ones" moments (like Lampard's goal against the Germans in the 2010 World Cup), I thought I'd seen everything there was to see from paid officials, until the past couple of weeks.
Now, I'm not going to get in to the issues of bias from the unpaid Sunday football lino - the dad who just wants his kid's team to win and will do everything possible to make it happen. I could write a whole book chapter about that. Indeed, this level of dodginess carries on into adult football, where the lino is a bib-wearing substitute or the supernumerary coach (normally someone's overbearing dad [a carry-on from kid's football] who has blagged his way on to the coaching staff). The substitute is disinterested in what they're doing, not flagging for throw-ins and raising the flag for offside whenever instructed by their own team. The supernumerary coach lino starts off being reasonably fair to persuade the ref they are unbiased in their role, but as soon as they can they switch it up. And with the ref on their side they can get away with some ridiculous calls. Ok, I said I wasn't go there, so, we'll move on.
Over the past 15+ years I've watched 1000's of local football matches, both youth and adult. I even got my "coaching badges", reffed a few youth games, and been that parent running the line a few hundred too. A quick diversion here - yes, I've just complained about unofficial officials, but unlike many I tried to be impartial in the role. I still get annoyed at myself when I think about one occasion where I may have made an incorrect call. I got a mouthful off the opposition kids and their coaches (great role models, obviously). But the call (an offside decision) seemed correct at the time. It was only a couple of days later when the Veo video of the game came out and when slowed-down there was an element of doubt and perhaps the player may have been onside. I say "may" because Veo is not like VAR where there's hundreds of cameras, and with that one camera there was still a element of "he may've actually been offside" - that's how close a call it was, so I guess I've been hard on myself for potentially, but not definitely, getting one wrong.
What I'm saying here is, it's tough to make that split second decision and I have a lot of sympathy for officials when it comes down to these split second decisions, and a lack of hundreds of cameras. I like to think I had the ability to do it properly but in reality I know I really wouldn't want to due to the lack of a thick skin. While we're at it, I throw some sympathy in the way of players too who get unfairly punished by leagues and officials for bad-timing (i.e. being the first) or happening to be the one on the wrong end of a media campaign. Let's say your job is to score goals, and a ball is pinged in at you and you have a fraction of a second to react and the ball takes a deflection on its way to you and it happens to strike you unexpectedly on your arm and the officials don't spot it. Do you a) say sorry ref, or b) sheepishly wheel away in celebration? The correct answer is the latter. It's happened 1000's of times over the years around the world. I'll take officials missing things like that over the agonising analysis of VAR.
Yes, it's tough to see everything and make instant, correct decisions all the time. As someone who volunteered to run the line for nearly a decade, I have a lot of sympathy for officials when it comes down to these split second decisions. However, when it comes to knowing the rules I think that's a bit different. Yes, there are some obscure laws in the game and the laws keep changing, but ask football fans up an down the country and probably the majority would know the rules on encroachment, and if referees needed reminding of it, the publicity surrounding the Mulbarton Wanderers and Woodford Town FA Cup tie should've made all referees alert to it.
So, imagine seeing a referee repeat the exact same mistake a few days later. Fortunately it didn't affect the result of the game as the team who had the converted penalty chalked off for encroachment still won. However, it wasn't the first decision that the ref had made that day that favoured the home team, almost like having a 12th man, and it galvanised them as they suddenly found themselves with only a one goal deficit rather than two, and it almost did impact the result.
Listening in to the buzz of the crowd all around, I could hear the incident repeatedly compared to the publicised incident, and everyone was still shocked after the game. Fortunately for the referee there was no video of the penalty. Presumably he has to put down a penalty on his report, so I imagine he had to make something up, perhaps claim it was a double-touch or something. But those of us who watched it will know the truth, and whilst I'm fully behind the respect of officials, not implementing the rules correctly really doesn't help.
