Emil's Blog
Thu 30th October 2014 | Atherton Collieries | By Emil Anderson
Cautions Crazy
Last summer's World Cup was a painful viewing for us England fans, and the fact our old sparring partners the Germans won the competition didn’t help matters.
I thought the competition was mediocre on the whole footballing wise, apart from the Germans but I thought the refereeing was excellent. It was like they had been told to officiate with common sense and to keep cautions to a minimum.
Looking at the disciplinary stats for the tournament on wiki, there were just an average of 2.92 bookings per game. Marvellous, the best players weren’t suspended for the final games! I was buoyed by this and my fingers were crossed that the 2014/15 campaign would see our refs show similar restraint.
Well, my hopes were soon dashed as our top whistle blowers continued to waft the cards with gay abandon. Then the final nail in the coffin for me – last Sunday’s Man Utd V Chelsea fixture. 10 (TEN) cautions, a game played out before a world wide audience of tens of millions by a cast worth hundreds of millions and every foul seemed to incur a booking. The game has gone caution crazy!!
What’s this got to do with the non-league scene? Well for every ten little Timmy’s who want to be Wayne Rooney, there is one little Tommy who wants to be Phil Dowd. Up and coming referees watch what their role models are doing on the television and replicate the behaviour from the park pitches to further up the non league pyramid.
Amateur players are treated like professionals. A slightly mistimed challenge is likely to see your name in the book as is an un/intentional handball. There seems to be little benefit of the doubt given to the standard of the player. If a ref knows an assessor is at the game, any hope of leniency seems to go out of the window as a downgraded mark from the all powerful assessor can ruin any hope of promotion for another campaign.
As such, the referees sometimes look like they are making decisions to please the man with the clipboard/Dictaphone rather than the players. I have seen a copy of the assessor’s criteria for marking a ref’s performance and it’s that in depth it makes War & Peace look like a short story.
I am on my soapbox now, remember I am looking at it from a football club's perspective. I’m not saying I disagree with every caution and personally I think an average of two a game per team in this current climate is to be expected. By my reckoning if you play a 45 game season you should expect to receive 90 cautions and a handful of red cards.
So far, after 19 games we have had 29 bookings and a sending off, so I think we are in the black at the moment. Games when we have no cautions should see the flag raised at Alder House and we have managed this feat on three occasions. Our opponents have had at least 10 more cautions than us in the games played. All together it's a few bob paid out to the local football Associations.
I will say I have seen some excellent young officials this term, and hopefully they can go on to bigger and better things, but if anybody can tell me how we can improve on our disciplinary record I will be all ears, as faxing through my monies to the LFA every Wednesday is one of the low points of my week.
Emil
Emil's Blog
Thu 30th October 2014 | Atherton Collieries
By Emil Anderson
Cautions Crazy
Last summer's World Cup was a painful viewing for us England fans, and the fact our old sparring partners the Germans won the competition didn’t help matters.
I thought the competition was mediocre on the whole footballing wise, apart from the Germans but I thought the refereeing was excellent. It was like they had been told to officiate with common sense and to keep cautions to a minimum.
Looking at the disciplinary stats for the tournament on wiki, there were just an average of 2.92 bookings per game. Marvellous, the best players weren’t suspended for the final games! I was buoyed by this and my fingers were crossed that the 2014/15 campaign would see our refs show similar restraint.
Well, my hopes were soon dashed as our top whistle blowers continued to waft the cards with gay abandon. Then the final nail in the coffin for me – last Sunday’s Man Utd V Chelsea fixture. 10 (TEN) cautions, a game played out before a world wide audience of tens of millions by a cast worth hundreds of millions and every foul seemed to incur a booking. The game has gone caution crazy!!
What’s this got to do with the non-league scene? Well for every ten little Timmy’s who want to be Wayne Rooney, there is one little Tommy who wants to be Phil Dowd. Up and coming referees watch what their role models are doing on the television and replicate the behaviour from the park pitches to further up the non league pyramid.
Amateur players are treated like professionals. A slightly mistimed challenge is likely to see your name in the book as is an un/intentional handball. There seems to be little benefit of the doubt given to the standard of the player. If a ref knows an assessor is at the game, any hope of leniency seems to go out of the window as a downgraded mark from the all powerful assessor can ruin any hope of promotion for another campaign.
As such, the referees sometimes look like they are making decisions to please the man with the clipboard/Dictaphone rather than the players. I have seen a copy of the assessor’s criteria for marking a ref’s performance and it’s that in depth it makes War & Peace look like a short story.
I am on my soapbox now, remember I am looking at it from a football club's perspective. I’m not saying I disagree with every caution and personally I think an average of two a game per team in this current climate is to be expected. By my reckoning if you play a 45 game season you should expect to receive 90 cautions and a handful of red cards.
So far, after 19 games we have had 29 bookings and a sending off, so I think we are in the black at the moment. Games when we have no cautions should see the flag raised at Alder House and we have managed this feat on three occasions. Our opponents have had at least 10 more cautions than us in the games played. All together it's a few bob paid out to the local football Associations.
I will say I have seen some excellent young officials this term, and hopefully they can go on to bigger and better things, but if anybody can tell me how we can improve on our disciplinary record I will be all ears, as faxing through my monies to the LFA every Wednesday is one of the low points of my week.
Emil
