One question that I have been asked regularly since the World Cup is, what did I think of the performance of the referees at the
tournament?
My honest answer is that it was at times disappointing. Not poor but disappointing because it promised to be a new dawn for World Cup refereeing and it never quite lived up to it's promise. So much planning, so much training, so much selection, went into those who took the whistle at the games greatest spectacle.
In previous tournaments there was an almost fanatical desire to ensure that referees from as many nations as possible took part. At the last World Cup, for instance, there were referees from 58 countries involved. One was a FIFA referee from the Cook Islands, a group of tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean. With all due respect to his talent, how many top games is he likely to referee in the course of a
season?
This time there were 44 candidates for 23 positions as referees at the finals. The performance of these candidates
was evaluated for two years before the tournament was due to take place. They had to undertake at least 35 hours of top class refereeing. Graham Poll, England's candidate, for instance undertook 43 top class matches, that's 65 hours refereeing at the highest level, including 15 overseas games in the last 12 months.
The other innovation was to have teams from the same countries - in other words the referees would always have the same two assistant referees at these games. Graham Poll's assistants were Phil Sharpe and Glenn Turner who shared all these experiences with him including the World Club Championships in Japan last December.
There were also get-togethers at workshops, where they undertook comprehensive medical tests as well as fitness tests and all the referees had to complete a psychological test. They were also interviewed by members of the FIFA Referees' Committee. The fitness tests, already very stringent, were changed to reflect more accurately the demands of the game. What's more the whole team had to pass the tests, not just the referee but his two assistants as well and shortly before the tournament one team was excluded because one of the assistant failed the tests. Imagine how the referee must have felt, to be left out not for his own shortcomings but the failure of someone else.
Also, which may sound unnecessary for referees at this level, they were all tested on their knowledge of the laws of the game. This is something that other officials around the world have to face every year when they re-register as referees. The whole idea of all this preparation, was not only to have the best-prepared referees in the world taking the games but that there would be much more consistency
So why didn't it quite go according to plan? I think the blame lies in the special instructions that the referees were given shortly before the game. These were not changes in the laws as some have suggested, but five areas to which they had to give special attention.
The first of these was lunging for the ball. It's a fact that too many players are injured by desperate lunging by opponents. Elbowing was the next and again a seemingly more common form of injurious behaviour. Holding, or more specifically shirt pulling, which has reached epidemic proportions. Handball, when it is done to prevent possible attacks being set up. And finally, simulation when it is clear that no contact has taken place. None of these can be argued with but far better that they had been introduced earlier during the year. To spring them on the referees as specials, just before the games were to take place, I think led to inconsistency in action, especially in the early stages.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2006