Re: Oh

By Hendonboy (legacy user)13/1/2015 19:11Tue Jan 13 19:11:43 2015In response to Re: Oh

Views: 3530

I think John, the clearcut cases Dave B cites above aside, any match referee is putting himself in a position that's impossible to defend if he postpones a match based only upon any evidence provided by the home side and not an impartial* third party. As they will also have day jobs, they may not be in a position to receive certain types of evidence and they almost certainly won't be aware of pressures the club might be under that could cause them to want a game postponed (e.g. only goalkeeper is unavailable against a rival). It doesn't really matter where that evidence is coming from, nor the channel through which they receive it - they've got to distrust it as much as they have to ignore a player complaining about a red-card offence they didn't see during a match.

It seems to me that the only thing anyone could have done to avoid the situation on this occasion would have been to arrange a second inspection by a local referee at 4:30 or 5pm. For all any of us know, Graham may have attempted to do so and either been told not to by the match referee or unable to get an available and qualified local referee to do it.

* - I add the asterisk only to note that on occasion the impartiality of such officials has been called into question, most notably by our friendly near neighbours in blue when they were due to visit an injury stricken-Lowestoft Town side.

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