Referees

If it’s not in writing then it’s a self administered law by referees. Whether it happens doesn’t make it lawful .

 

Its clearly not a law as you rightly point out. It is human nature though for refs to want a higher degree of certainty when awarding a foul in the box. All decisions you would make as a ref would be on a sliding scale of certainty. Sometimes you might be 50/50 and sometimes 100% and everywhere in between. To give a pen you are going to want to be closer to 100% than you are in giving a free kick in a less critical area of the pitch. You can stick anyone in a ref's kit and they'd adopt the same mentality.

 

The really annoying one is when a player has his back to the corner taker but still wrestles but obviously has no intention of challenging for the ball as he hasn't a clue where it is

 

Just watching the Cov Wrexham game, a Cov player is held back by a shirt pull, free kick no yellow card. Quite literally thirty seconds later a Wrexham player is stopped via a shirt pull and he gives a yellow card. And we wonder why they get so much negativity?

 

We are watching same game, consistency is all we ask.

 

It was less than a minute for the two fouls, both identical but seems one a yellow. I've seen this ref before, I think he's officiated us before and from memory he's useless.

 

not watching the game but was it due to location on the pitch?

 

Haha no, it was cos the ref is generally known for being as poor quality.

 

Obviously. The location will have been different, the potential development of play will have been different, the extent of the pull will have been different. There will have been loads 'different' purely by nature of the fact they were two different incidents. People constantly talk about 'consistency' but then use extremely broad criteria for expecting the sanction to be the same. Not having a pop RT and maybe you're right but I'm fairly confident that the referee saw a distinguishing feature between the two.

 

I do feel for referees sometimes - No doubt that some of them are awful but it’s a pretty thankless job, one which you’ll generally get abuse regardless of how good your performance is.
I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.

That being said, the inconsistency drives me mental, I’m happy for refs to either be whistle happy or not as an example, but pick one and stick to it for the whole game, don’t chop and change throughout the game

 

I feel like the refs for our last 2 home games have been decent. Only complaint for Plymouth ref was he was poor at getting out of the way of players a couple of times but that impacted both teams

 

I thought yesterdays ref in particular was excellent, really letting the game flow. It does help refs when they have 2 teams who are having a go and not resorting to dark arts.

 

Just checked to see who reffed the Coventry game and it was our old “friend “ Sam Allison. You will remember him from his balls up re number of subs in our game against Exeter a few years ago. Think he had a very poor game in one of our matches this season.

 

Yeah that was him.

 

Seb Stockbridge has turned out to be a good referee. He was poor 10 years ago, but fair play to him for becoming one of the better referees on the circuit.

 

It is important that fans understand what rules are in play when they stop the match. Deciding that a two players are treated differently due to location of the offence. Ultimately it is fans playing their salaries. No I am not advocating that fans should be involved in the actual decision making, but clarity and consistency is extremely important. My understanding of different rules on different parts of the pitch is limited to the penalty area.

 

It wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference given some decisions, if they put it in writing.

 

So much of the decision making is subjective, not sure why a player hasn’t been booked and another has. If the referee’s managers have said we want you to make a decision based on where they are on the pitch is absolutely madness. If that is the case then I feel only sympathy. I witnessed two identical fouls, no idea how much shirt they had in their hands or what part of the pitch it was on. Why should this matter……no idea because both were fouls.

 

We have referees announcing decisions after VAR monitor reviews in the Premier League and it doesn't make a difference as the fans don't really want to listen and they boo any decision against them.