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ASK THE REF, GRAHAM FRANKLAND 20-12-05
The ComeOnBoro.com message board has been red hot since the entertaining 3-3 draw with the Spuds at the Riverside on Sunday with in some cases rants, and in others intelligent criticism of the match referee Mr Howard Webb. Everybody has been asking for my opinion of his performance, so here goes:
Firstly, let me say, I was at the game in my usual seat in the North Stand, and as such clearly heard all the usual chants of 'The referee's a wanker', 'Ya don't know what ya doing' and the fairly modern one of 'You're not fit to referee'.
It would have been difficult not to hear those seeing as I was one of the people singing them. However, for the duration of the game I am a fan and not someone who is more interested in the referee. Now that would be sad wouldn't it?
However, in my capacity as the ComeOnBoro.com 'Man in Black' who is asked to give a constructive assessment of the ref's performance, I have firstly considered the opinions of certain professionals who were at the game.
Steve McLaren, in his post match interview did not refer to Mr Webb in his own assessment of the game, simply highlighting what he thought was good about our performance and where we were not so good. Surely, if the performance of the referee was as bad as the message board would have us believe, then that would have been highlighted by our manager?
Also, a certain Sun reporter at the game said in his post match analysis of Mr Webb's performance that 'he could have had a tough game after having to book three players in the first twenty minutes, but he kept his authority well and that ended up helping the game to flow'.
He followed this by awarding him a mark of 6, which I can tell you from my own days is pretty much par for the course. So, anybody who was not at the game having read those two reports would believe that from a refereeing point of view there were no problems. This leads me to wonder whether we, as football supporters following a team who are clearly not at their peak allow our frustrations to get in the way of fair and reasonable analysis when it comes to assessing the referee on match day.
Without wanting to dissect every decision that was made on Sunday, I have come to the conclusion that the performance witnessed by him is a prime example of what I said last week when I outlined that 'it seems that referee progression is much more about fitness than the correct detection of offences and man-management'.
Having read the message board since the game, there has not been one posting questioning his ability to get around the pitch and rightly so as he is obviously well up to standard in this regard. Sadly however, there have been numerous postings in relation to his poor detection of offences and his lack of man-management, and with good reason.
My reasons for saying this can be summed up in two incidents that occurred in the game.
1. The James Morrisson incident late in the game.
Although the incident was a pure accident and no offence had been committed, what was extremely poor was the fact that the referee seemed oblivious to James's obvious problem and only became aware of it when the other players brought it to his attention. How on earth he failed to detect this immediately is beyond me, when it was clear that he was knocked out cold before he hit the deck.
As a referee you should develop a 'sixth sense' when challenges are being made so that when the ball moves away from the scene you develop a 'lazy eye' which stays on the players challenging for the ball, in case anything untoward happens between the players. This is rather than simply following the ball. Any lengthy delays on Sunday could have had serious consequences to Morrison (potential for tongue swallowing etc etc) so Mr Webb needed to be much more alert than he was I'm afraid and this brings into question his overall ability to detect things happening in the game.
2. The Jermaine Defoe corner flag incident.
As I have said previously the biggest weapon in a referee's armoury is his ability to man-manage players, a weapon, which was sadly lacking from the referee in this incident. When Defoe was initially told to go and replace the corner flag he had deliberately thrown away, my immediate reaction was to say 'well done referee'.
Unfortunately a stand off then ensued between Referee and player with the petulance of the player overcoming the obvious weakness of the referee's ability to assert his authority. You can compare it to a young child throwing his dummy away and the parent saying 'if you do that again you will not get it back'. Once the child does it again then the parent must carry out the threat and refuse the child the dummy, otherwise the child sees the weakness of his parents and continues to do the same thing time and time again.
On Sunday, once the child (Defoe) refused to put the corner flag back then the referee should have seen no option but to book him, either for unsporting behaviour or even dissent, because I am sure that Mr Webb would have warned him as to the consequences if he didn't. Why he did not do this is difficult to understand, and his lack of action simply served to highlight his own failings in regard to his own man-management skills and the player walking away smugly believing that he had taken the piss out of the referee.
In conclusion to all of this, I have to agree with most people on the message board that it was not one of Mr Webb's better days and without dwelling on each and every decision made on Sunday (not all of his decisions were wrong) I hope that this gives a reasoned assessment of his performance which I am sure, with hindsight, he would not be too pleased about himself.
Merry Christmas to all our members and until the next time....enjoy your football.
Graham
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Graham's answers will be published every week in this section. If you have a question for the ref, perhaps about a recent dubious refereeing decision, something that happened during his own football career or about football or reffing in general, then please write in straight away.
FILL THIS FORM OUT WITH YOUR QUESTION, or just email us here.
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