'You've written two articles about refereeing at the World Cup,' said a regular reader, 'but you haven't mentioned Graham Poll.'
I suppose he's right; no review of the World Cup 2006 would be complete without reference to Graham Poll. Or more correctly, his actions at the Croatia v Australia match, when he allowed Josip Simunic to stay on the field after cautioning the player twice and showing him two yellow cards. It was only after his third yellow card that Poll gave him his marching orders, clearly against the laws of the game.
Some commentators felt that Poll had not had a good game, querying a couple of other decisions, but those were merely a matter of opinion. Referees would think themselves lucky to get through a game without some disagreement but this was an error in law. Graham Poll didn't realise that he had made a mistake. It wasn't until he was in the changing room at the end of the match, that he was made aware of what had happened. After expressing his disbelief, he watched the video of the game, which confirmed his worst nightmare. He immediately took full responsibility for what had happened. 'I can't blame a FIFA directive,' he said, 'It was my error, and the buck stops with me.'
Commendable though that may be, is he to be held solely responsible for the mistake? If we look in the
Laws of the Game at the role of the fourth official, it says, 'The fourth official must indicate to the referee, when the wrong player is cautioned because of mistaken identity, or when a player is not sent off, having been seen to be given a second caution'. Quite clearly the fourth official did not carry out his duty to remind Poll that Simunic had already been cautioned.
Why this was, is something of a mystery, particularly when you recall that all the officials were equipped with radio mikes and receivers. Surely it would have been simplicity itself for the fourth official to have whispered (or even shouted) in Poll's ear, that the player had already received a yellow card.
Incidentally, the duties of the fourth official, go on to say that he should indicate to the referee, 'when violent conduct occurs out of the view of the referee and the assistant referees'. Some people were critical of the referee in the final for taking advice from his fourth official to send off Zinedine Zidane the French captain, who outrageously head butted his Italian antagonist Marco Materazzi but of course he was quite correct to do so.
Although Graham Poll was a member of the Reading Referees' Society during his time in Tilehurst, I don't know him
well enough to be able to phone and ask what went wrong, so I can only say what I have been given to understand.
On referees' record cards, the details of one club are kept on the left hand side, and the other club on the right hand side. What apparently happened, was that when he first took Simunic's number, he put it on the wrong side of the card, i.e. under the Australian team. Therefore when he wrote it down for the second yellow card, he didn't spot that he already had the same number in his notebook and in the heat of the game he didn't remember that he had cautioned him previously. This resulted it what was - until the third yellow
card -a lucky escape for Croatia and Sumunic.
In the eyes of most referees before the tournament, if the England team failed to reach the final, Poll would have become the first English referee since Jack Taylor, to be appointed to referee the final. He missed out in two previous World Cups and this was certainly his last chance. He realised as he watched the video that his dream was over. Sad that this was to be, all because of a slip of the pen.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2006