A couple of Sundays ago, after my own match, I settled down to watch the final of the African Nations Cup and a right bore it turned out to be.
In previous Africa Cup matches there has always been something different or interesting. On a couple, of occasions,
Cameroon have come up with new football clothing, sleeveless shirts and an all-in-one outfit, both of which FIFA were quick to squash. Another time it was also the first try out of the new offside interpretations, which discovered a little snag and prompted some re-writing. In the last tournament, Reading’s Andre Bikey was sent off for attacking a paramedic while he treated one of his own team mates. That’s probably never been seen before.
This year however it was some old-fashioned refereeing techniques that caught my eye. The referee seldom appeared in long distance camera shots, mainly because he was using a very straight diagonal patrol path.
I am always surprised that many people think that in a game referees run where their fancy takes them. They probably did until Sir Stanley Rous appeared on the scene.
Few today remember Rous, although he was once the most important person in football. The only occasion I met him was when he presented me with an award and afterwards stopped to chat. He was at that time President of FIFA so I was highly honoured. Before that he was secretary of the FA and before that he was a schoolteacher and a renowned referee. Some idea of his fame as a referee is when he visited Reading Referees Association as guest speaker just before the last war. Over two hundred people turned up to hear him speak, their largest attendance ever. It was while he was a referee that he ‘invented’ the diagonal system of refereeing.
Basically this means that the referee runs diagonally from one corner of the pitch to the other. The assistant referees (originally
'linesmen' of course) run the opposite line to the diagonal, which means the ball, and therefore the action. is almost always between the referee and one of his assistants. This then gives two pairs of eyes watching the game in progress.
In recent years, the diagonal system has become almost unrecognisable but the basics are still there. Nowadays
a referee will deviate from the diagonal for the very valid objective of getting closer to the play. So. if the play is on the opposite side, nearer his assistant, the referee will come well across the pitch. Of course referees can get too close.
Royals fans will no doubt remember the year Norwich gained promotion,
when referee Neil Barry, way off his diagonal and standing on the edge of the penalty area gifted them a goal. A Reading defender headed the ball out, which hit Barry and landed at the feet of a Norwich attacker to score the winning goal.
Ken Aston was another schoolteacher who became a top referee and he was also an innovator. It was he who thought up the red and yellow cards after witnessing the Argentinean Rattin refuse to leave the field in the 1966 World Cup because he pretended he didn’t understand the German referee’s instructions.
Some years later Aston said, ‘I have just come back from the United States where I saw the fittest referee in the world. He was so fit
that he saw everything from just a few yards away and he ruined the game’. It may seem strange but you can miss things by being too close. The optimum distance away from play is now thought to be twenty yards or fifteen metres. Close enough to see things clearly but wide enough to get a true perspective.
None of this worried Koman Coulitaly of Mali, the referee of the Ghana/Egypt game, he stuck to a diagonal that Sir Stanley would have been proud of.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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