Standard of Refereeing

[madras]

Most are bad, but one who stands out in particular is Martin Atkinson. If i remember rightly he made a mess of our game at Man City and had a 'mare in the mackems/Stoke game. The thing is, how can 3 officials regularly not see major incidents between them?

 

I never understand how people can ask questions like this.

 

It happened, they missed it. It happens all the time, so how is it in any way surprising?

 

It's like we're judging referees against a non-existent ideal standard that has never ever been met.

True, it happens all the time, and that's the annoying thing. You could understand if the ref misses something, but we have so called "assistant referees" who simply bottle out of getting involved and don't assist the referee.

 

Someone on 5 Live the other night, can't remember who, was saying that a lot of referees tell their linesmen to do what they tell them (rather than bottling it), hence the reason why linesmen will wait for the ref's arm to go up before indicating a throw in.

a couple of years ago radio 5 mic'd up a ref and he told his linesmen to give offsides, throw-ins and handballs...everything else was to be left to himself.

[Exiled in Texas]

#1 job for an AR is to watch for offside. 

 

So a lot of his focus will be on watching the 2nd-to-last defender and adjusting his position according to that.  Watching play is secondary.  In fact the quicker the game gets, and the more the AR has to watch the offside line, and listen for the ball being played.  If you try to watch the ball being played, and then turn to look at the offside line, you'll be out of position and too late to see where the players were at the time of the pass.

 

There is also a huge difference between seeing something, and seeing exactly what happened.  A lot of times, especially when the ball is not in your quadrant, you see something happen (as do the coaches, bench and fans) but you don't know exacly what happened.  And unlike the coaches, bench, fans you can't just give the decision to their team even though if you don't you're a s*** ref. 

 

And, yes, unfortunately there are referees who will tell their AR to only call offsides and throw-ins, or to give him first call for fouls in the area etc.  The ARs are supposed to pay attention during the game to the calls being made by the referee and learn what he considers to be a foul and then support that.