This year, 2008, is the centenary of the Referees’ Association in this country and in July they will be celebrating in style, when at the anniversary dinner at Solihull the guest speaker will be the godfather of Italian referees, Pierluigi Collina. I
I doubt very much whether I shall be at that august occasion but I will certainly be in the midlands for the annual conference during the day, when there will be other notable speakers such as Mike Riley, the Premiership referee.
Mike Riley doesn’t have the presence of Collina on the field of play (who does?) to make him a really great referee but he is a brilliant speaker. For three years running that he has been invited to make the
Conference keynote speech.
Last year his theme was ‘Protecting the image of the game’ illustrated with video clips of flashpoints on a giant screen. He focused on three main
areas: simulation, which I touched on in last week's
column, brutal play, which I discussed a few weeks ago when I wrote about flying tackles, and
confrontation.
Confrontation comes in two different forms. First of all there is the individual player and perhaps a couple of his team mates who want to challenge your decision face to face and probably in a loud tone of voice. In some ways, although disconcerting at the time, these incidents are the easiest to deal with. I saw a notice in a local jewellers shop recently which read, ‘The quality of our service depends on the attitude of our customers’ The jeweller told me this meant, if a customer was nasty to the staff, then they would be nasty back. In my years in retailing I would never have adopted such a policy. Aggression only breeds more aggression.
It’s the same for referees. In confrontation situations
- they need first and foremost to keep calm. Easier said than done of course, when players are hurling insinuations at you. It’s said that dogs and footballers can smell fear, so a referee should not back off or back down. He should use what we call the psychology of the open hand to get players to keep away and calm down and then when the heat has subsided to take action. That action may be a red or yellow card for the original incident or a yellow one for dissent or even a red one for insulting language. It’s very difficult to take a player’s name when he is shouting at you at the top of his voice.
The referee needs to take similar sort of action when faced with a mass confrontation from a team. That is when a whole mob of players surround the referee, either to dispute a decision against one of their players or in an attempt to get a referee to take harsher action against an opponent.
Chelsea are past masters at this type of behaviour much as Manchester United used to be. There was an example just before Christmas when Essien got sent off for catching Derby striker Keith Miller in the face. Referee Andre Marriner, was quickly surrounded by shouting and protesting Chelsea players and it was sometime before order could be restored and Essien left the field of play.
I don’t think that anyone could disagree with Mike Riley’s view that this type of behaviour is damaging to the image of the game but was he talking to the wrong audience? Although the video recording showed Essien quite clearly looking at Miller before lashing his arm out into his face, the Chelsea management not only appealed against the sending off but their manager, Avram Grant, saw nothing wrong in the mass confrontation that the referee was subjected to by their players. It shows that no matter how much action referees take, football’s image will only be protected by a change of attitude by players and clubs.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008