It’s probably a question that as a referee I shouldn’t be asking but, if I see an offence when refereeing a game, are there occasions when I should ignore it? I don’t mean situations when the team offended against still have clear advantagem but perhaps for something that doesn’t have too much influence on the play.
Mark Lawrenson, the former Liverpool and Ireland defender who is now one of the senior pundits on BBC’s
Match of the Day clearly thinks so. In last Saturday’s match between West Bromwich Albion and Blackburn Rovers, Ryan Donk of the Albion needlessly held on to the shirt of Rovers Jason Roberts inside his own penalty area, although the opponent was heading away from goal. His tugging on the shirt made little difference but it was spotted by the referee, Mike Jones, who immediately pointed to the penalty spot.
Very few people knew what the penalty was for and it was only when another camera gave us the referee’s view, that we clearly saw the shirt-pulling. Whilst admitting that it was an offence, Mark Lawrenson felt that the referee shouldn’t have awarded the penalty. ‘He (Mike Jones) is new to the
Premiership; he was obviously being watched and felt he had to give the penalty. He’ll learn.’
Years ago, when the booklet on the laws of the game was called the
Referees’ Chart and Players’ Guide to the Laws of the
Game, it advised referees not to ‘constantly whistle for trifling infringements’. Would shirt-pulling be considered trifling? Just recently, I heard another piece of advice, this time from a Premier League referee who counselled that you should only make ‘credible’ decisions.
Of course this can be taken in a number of ways. Firstly as referees, we are often reminded about our fitness. Be fit and therefore able to keep up with play, and your decisions will have much more credibility being made from fifteen yards rather than, say, forty yards away. This in turn will make dissent of your decisions less likely when the players realise that you are in a good position to have seen what has gone on.
Alternatively, it could mean that you only give decisions that are credible in the eyes of the players. In other words everyone has to see that it is foul. Perhaps this is what Mark Lawrence meant. No one else saw the shirt-pulling and we would probably never been aware of it had the referee not blown, thus needing another camera angle to see what he had whistled for.
A few days before, I had an incident myself with shirt-pulling in a cup-tie. An attacker was chasing the ball into his opponent’s penalty area and, as he passed an opponent, he gave a quick tug on his shirt to slow him down. His shot on goal missed but I had already blown for the foul. The player protested of course and there were probably only three people on the pitch who knew what happened, the player, the opponent and me, so was it a credible decision? I quickly let everyone else know why I had blown and the player realised he had been rumbled and his protest quickly faded away.
I tend to look at things like this in a slightly different light. If the players had got away with it in both these games, perhaps they would have thought that shirt-pulling is acceptable. Already many players seem to think that there is nothing wrong in the laws with a little shirt-pulling, whilst of course it is counted as holding, one of the ten free-kick (or penalty) offences. By being penalised, at least they know they have committed an offence and may be deterred from doing it again.
Mike Jones will undoubtedly learn but I hope it’s not from the likes of Mark Lawrence.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008