This past weekend has seen a general election in the Republic of Ireland and a lot of my time has been taken up keeping an eye on the outcome. As it turns out, votes have been cast all over the country and the results have been an eye opener. In political terms it has been the equivalent of a an earthquake. What sort of a government this country will end up with for the next few years is anybody,s guess at the moment. To be perfectly honest it is a bit of a mess, as is the performances of a lot of referees on a weekly basis this season. Getting things wrong is because of bad decision making, something referees and politicians have been doing now for quite a while. In between the counting of the votes I managed to run my eye over the performances of Jon Moss and Martin Atkinson for the boys at Pitch Talk. I once again had plenty to see, and in fairness I was fairly annoyed once again how the boys in the middle with the whistle are getting the big calls wrong.
Jon Moss was in charge of the West Bromwich Albion v Crystal Palace game which was always going to be a tricky encounter for the officials. It was penned as one of those games that had not got much depending on the outcome. These are the type of game that a referee can get into so much trouble . From the outset let me just make a point that I do like Jon Moss as a referee and he tends normally to call most things correct. This weekend was a bad one for Jon as I thought his handling of the game was well below the level that I have seen him refereeing before. It was a culmination of a lot of the small fouls that he missed which led to his biggest error in the game. No matter what way you look at it, if a player pushes his opponent in the penalty area when the ball is in play, the referee should award a spot kick. So in the fifty second minute of the game when West Bromwich Albion defender Gareth McAuley barged into the back of Scott Dann the decision should have been the awarding of a penalty kick. To the utter amazement of quite a few people, the referee waved play on. A terrible decision in my opinion. The referee explained after the game that he had been distracted by another West Bromwich player and missed the incident. That is a cop out and a disappointing response from the official. One other thing that I noticed during the game was the referees willingness to apply the advantage rule, I felt he over used it in this game. Jon will no doubt review his game over the next couple of days and will be disappointed with his performance.
Those of you who read my regular column for the boys at Pitch Talk will know I admire Martin Atkinson as a referee. Unfortunately Martin is now starting to have a few suspect decisions and in my opinion he could do with a bit of a rest. On Saturday he took charge of the Southampton v Chelsea game. It was a pretty much a game I expected the well respected official to totally be in control of and in fairness he pretty much got most things right. But in my opinion he got the decision to allow Chelsea,s equaliser to stand, totally wrong. In the build up to the goal he allowed a clash between Chelsea,s Kenedy and the Saints player Soares to go unpunished. As the pair clashed the Chelsea player was clearly seen to kick out at his opponent. Martin played an advantage, but instead in my opinion he should have stopped the game and red carded the Chelsea player and award Southampton a free kick. I was astonished he did not give it, Martin even got a flag from his assistant to indicate there was a problem. So although the official had not got a bad game, his decision not to produce a red card for this incident was a big downer in my eyes.
Well there we have it, another election is over in Ireland and another weekend of Association Football is far behind us. But as we look to the future, can we see on the horizon a weekend when the referees have a good time. Ah well, it gives me the ammunition to put these articles together for the boys at Pitch Talk,so long may the errors keep coming. Until next week, enjoy your football and let us all hope that referees do not ruin your weekend. CIAO.
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