Perhaps not surprisingly, a number of Reading FC fans tackled me last week about some of the referee’s decisions at Reading’s home game with Derby County. When I say tackled, what I really mean is that they told me where the referee had made mistakes. It so happens that I was at the match and I have to agree that there were at least three ‘debatable’ decisions. Let’s put it this way; it was difficult from a seat in the stand to see why the decisions were made.
In Reading’s Premiership days, I would have looked forward to seeing those incidents again on
Match of the Day that night. Sadly that pleasure is now denied to us but I learnt that Reading v Derby was to be the featured match on
ITV's Championship programme on Sunday morning.
Although I had to be at a new referees’ training mach I was able to get my wife to video the programme for me. In this way I was able to view all the disputed decisions and to replay them again and
again. The truth is, there was nothing to prove that the referee had made a mistake. In fact, it didn’t prove that he’d got all the decisions right either,, but it tended to show that the referee was on top of his game.
Let me take the first incident to illustrate what I mean. From a Reading free kick a Derby defender headed the ball into his own net. The referee spoilt the celebrations by over- ruling what seemed to be a perfectly good ‘own’ goal to the majority of the 18,700 crowd, deciding that a Reading player had pulled on the shirt of the defender.
Referees are there to make decisions but refereeing is also about movement and poisoning. Movement means just that, moving around the field to be in the right place to make those decisions. Take the simple situation of a free kick as in this incident. There is no point in the referee remaining where the free kick is going to be taken. He needs to be where the ball is likely to finish up after it has been kicked. What we call the ‘dropping zone’ but he is not watching the ball, he is watching the players and at this stage it is all about angles. Referees try to position themselves ‘side on’ so they are able to look in-between opposing players.
This is where the referee was at that free kick, looking side on into the Derby penalty area. But it was a view that the camera didn’t have, so there is no way we can say that the referee was right or wrong, we just didn’t see what he saw.
The other two contentious decisions concerned possible penalties to Reading. If we take the one where Reading’s Ivar Ingimarsson was pushed in the chest by an opponent. It was an open and shut case for everyone, including the television commentators who went on for several minutes declaring that a penalty had been given, before realising, somewhat incredulously, that the free kick had been given the other way.
So what could be the reason for the referee’s decision, did the Reading players foul his opponent first? Again the referee was in position, looking side on and saw something from an angle that the television cameras didn’t have. The other penalty shout was after Stephen Hunt had amazingly run through the Derby defence, only to be brought down in the penalty area. Here, however, the camera did have the right angle and showed that the referee was absolutely correct. The Derby defender played the ball cleanly. So isn’t it fair to accept that
the referee probably got the other decisions correct as
well?
Let’s give him credit for not only being in the right positions but also getting his angles right.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008