Please stop ruining the game I love

Greavsie was right, “football is a funny old game”. Since I fell in love with it as a young boy, it has changed beyond all recognition. From player’s wages to state of the art stadiums, the game has become a global commodity. Media companies fork out absurd numbers to offer us live coverage and so it was yesterday as the cold outside, not that I needed an excuse, meant I lay on the couch and watched the two Sky games.

What unfortunately hasn’t changed, from the days of Pat Partridge et al, is the standard of refereeing. In fact it has got decidedly worse. Both of yesterday’s games were refereed at a poorer standard than when a van driver from Dover happily kept pace with George Best and Charlie Cooke. Sadly that’s how it will stay too as the standard of management within the various football authorities hasn’t kept pace with the game either. Incompetent administrators will readily accept incompetent refereeing because they are completely oblivious to its consequences. If they did, I certainly know one referee who’d never be allowed onto another pitch again. It was easy to lip read him regularly mouthing “calm down” to players. He was just too stupid to realise it was his appalling decisions that raised their blood pressure in the first place. This fella must hate him beyond belief!


nick