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WHO'S THAT GENTLEMAN IN THE BLACK? 7-12-05
Sometimes, usually after a few glasses of something containing alcohol, I reckon my conscience receives a nudge, a wee prick, to use a few clumps of grey matter while I have a good cogitate.
Ya know, expending some thoughts in the direction of a subject matter I previously haven't overly analysed or usually given any undue consideration. In that context, specifically to think about the lot of a constantly marginalised group of modern society.
No! Not those twin cranium unintelligible buggers paddling in the maudlin waters of the Wear muttering 'We Mackem ya brakem'. Pity is the only thought I have for them. Not.
I'm talking about the bloke who pulls a game of Association Football together at every level of the sport in every nation around the globe.
The referee.
What set my mind whirring on this subject was a new feature added to this very website over the weekend by C'mon SteveG. Not a follower but definitely a leader, this web tome has inducted a recently retired top class referee, in the form of one Graham Frankland. The lad is a Boro wallah no less who we welcome aboard for a weekly column.
From his site photo he appears to be a boyish looking bugger, even after all that weekly stress, pressure and abuse. He will professionally offer expert opinion on all things refereeing and help us to unblur the muddy art of officialdom out there in the middle of the pitch.
I've personally zapped a few quizzical e-mails his way this weekend and I suggest you lads do the same. A better understanding of the technicalities of various rules would be illuminating to us all, such as my question about his attire beneath the black shorts though.
Week in week out, through hail, snow, rain and sun, a typical British summer day no less, a hardy breed of enforcer enters the fray of the football arena to ensure that our great game can function properly. That it is played in the correct manner within the rules of their jurisdiction, whether that is under FIFA, UEFA the FA or the Pally Park all-stars reserve league.
Now reflect a wee bit and just think about this. Would you willingly give up your sacred and precious weekend, every weekend, to drag your backside out in all weather, all over the country? Onto an arena where two protagonists of collective but opposing souls, have a ninety minute plus war within rules that you have to personally enforce, with generally everybody on that pitch and at the side of it hating your guts and questioning your every utterance and decision?
I can just hear your answer in the negative over the swearing and over use of that description of the testicles.
What a job the referee has. One minute you are the best thing since Newboulds midget pork pies, the next as good as a swig of warm cod liver oil laced with chillies. Constantly at the whim of the crowd, attracting the ire and ridicule of the taunters and chanters, the black enamelled fatherless person, the person who masturbates himself, that anal passage. Charming.
In the rarefied blowtorch glare of the middle, it must be a very daunting experience but some excel and some perish like a grape in the sun. In this profession the best just meld into the background and let the game ebb and flow and have a quiet forceful word on the run with errant players, allowing advantage and fair physical competition.
The worst simply crack the shits early on and brandish a red to impose will and control on a game, constantly stopping the game to give lengthy perfect camera angle lectures. When you think about it, refereeing is an extremely difficult job at any level but far worse in the intense atmosphere of the top level. Imagine Roy Keane on your case for ninety minutes of verbal hairdryer.
The job I should imagine would be even more difficult though at the international level, with a whole new set of problems with language difficulties, differing rule interpretations, unfamiliarity, history, wars, religious anger, garlic breath and poncy hairdos.
The mental pressure on the modern day whistler must be stratospheric, in 1000`C inferno proportions and not unlike the temperature in the place the majority of fans wish upon a referee who gives a contentious decision against their team. We are in truth all so utterly one-eyed, intensely loyal and parochial that it's hard for us to be objective, thus only a true passionless knowledgeable neutral can see the right and wrong of what unfolds on the pitch. A referee, a veritable judge, jury and executioner rolled into one.
Let's be honest, that's how we all remember atrocious decisions. They are all committed by some bugger refereeing against OUR own team. Occasionally there's one blunder we all agree on, like the Spurs 'goal' pulled back from behind the goal-line by Roy Carroll last season, a decision that is so blatant we all can say it was wrong in total unanimity, even the United fans.
My bad memories of howlers against Boro are many but my personal anguish was huge after one against my Beloved in the 1997 FA Cup final against our perennial Wembley foes Chelski. After we'd been blasted by that Di Matteo bomb in the first few minutes, we'd clawed our way back into the game. Approaching half-time, we were starting to impose our will on the Blues, even after carrying a sack of Italian tatties on our collective back in the form of the obviously unfit Ravanelli.
Another much more reliable Italian, the whole-hearted Gianluca Festa, rose majestically at the corner of the box and powerfully headed home. I went on a celebration jig, jumping and yelping around the room only to be brought down to earth by the fact that it had been ruled offside.
You have got to be joking!
Imagine if that goal had stood, the effect it would have had on the outcome of the game would have been enormous as they'd have been absolutely gutted and we'd have been like a dog with two dongers.
That atrocious decision still sits festering and bubbling in my memory as an act of such cruel and so obviously biased officialdom, that a practicing Optometrist should have been ordered onto the pitch immediately to escort off the ref. And his linesman!
To this day it was not offside and it will never be. NOT even in video replay, in slow motion, in micro motion, backwards, upside down, on DVD, in panavision, wide-screen surround sound, 16-9 ratio, smellivision, on the Moon, Bollocks!
Gianluca's old man watching in Sardinia, his Pappa, thought it was a goal and that's good enough for me and every other red hearted Smoggy.
That last story had a very Italian flavour, which brings me to another bloke from the European boot who superbly excels at his chosen profession.
The inimitable Pierluigi Collina, widely regarded by the cognoscenti of players, coaches and fans as being numero uno in the world of multiple time pieces and chrome whistles. He's got the lot, old Pierluigi.
Uncle Fester on go juice wrapped in an athletic stick insect body, cool, charismatic, flamboyant, dominantly masterful, commanding and 99% of the time spot on with his decision making. Quite brilliant, a superstar of the stop-watch and dried pea whistle, a man who attracts as much attention as the star players he rules gaining wholehearted and widespread respect.
All simply because he is unanimously, the best referee on the planet, with so much natural ability in the job, but yes, he even makes the odd human cock up. He has his famous unmistakeable visage on trendoid t-shirts, has his own fans and is, I'm reliably informed, even a sex-symbol to the fashionable gold jangling ciao Bella Totty. He has his own very classy website and truthfully, why bloody not.
Maybe that's the answer to a consistent uniform application of the rules across the planet. To clone Pierluigi Collina and replicate the best of his ilk all over the planet. Trouble is he's been pensioned off. He was forced to retire due to his age even though he's fitter than a one-year old Gazelle on Guarana. Go figure.
That's the great game we love though, it would be a far lesser spectacle without the human failings and exasperating decisions of a fallible but totally committed person aided by a couple of flag bearers. Technical information to help officialdom decide a contentious issue due to the speed, physical intensity and the pressure of the modern game would surely improve the spectacle. Also, helping to rid the inference of bias and quite possibly the avenue for match fixing corruption.
Let's face it, there are bent refs out there who have accepted bribes of huge amounts of filthy lucre over the years. Money talks and human greed listens. Technological aids could also narrow the field of 'mistakes'.
The constant media spotlight for the top boys is horrendous when you think about it, with every decision analysed in micro slo-mo by a panel of experts with years of on-field experience and off the pitch behind the microphone. Scrutiny that would melt the average Joe Blow into a quivering screaming wreck on valium confined to a straight jacket and a padded cell.
I mean, imagine if every day of your working career you were subjected to the same form of intense inferno spotlight as the man in black, or green or red or that nice shade of banana which tones particularly well when a yellow card is brandished. How long would you last? Not too bloody good for the heart, self-esteem or general healthy demeanour me thinks.
Softens your attitude a smidge towards the bloke with the whistle doesn't it? That's until the useless sod gives another decision in the favour of the opposition. Refereeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!
Human evolution dictates that we must move onwards and upwards and it's time to do that. We need to accept technology within a framework that will allow the majority of games at the professional level to allow the intervention of visual and computer aided decision making.
What to do?
Look at and embrace the available technology for the good of the rules to aid the referee and his linesmen to provide a better service to the game. With more support they would be able to more consistently apply the rules correctly and thus improve the end product, the spectacle we watch and adore. Players, coaches, the media and fans will all be far happier.
One thing I've realised while writing this is that as much as you and I love this fabulous game and all it's inherent foibles, idiosyncrasies and faults, every single referee, to a man or woman also loves the game massively - apart from that git who didn't give Festa's goal - and if you think about it, you'd have to love the game to do the job.
The only other alternative to embracing technology is to renew the Whistler's and Flag Rattlers Society subscription with the Optometrist Association and the Guide Dogs for the Blind service.
Enough Said.
ErimusRed.
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