Wednesday 27 July 2016

Cards and Cads: Red Dawn Awaits as Referees Prepare for New Season

You're a right Card!!!
When you talk to fans who have strayed from the game there are common themes as to why they have lost interest. Chief among them is the cheating culture among players but a close second comes the growing celebrity of the match referee. Too often key games become all about the personal preferences of wannabe school headmasters.

And so the governing body (IFAB) for setting the rules of the game (yes there is another separate quango to add to the chaos!) have announced 85 new law changes in an effort to promote fair play.....and improve the footballing experience, no doubt. More rules to deal with the rules that are already wrecking our game methinks...

These include a whole heap of new opportunities to dish out red cards! Even better, referees no longer have to wait until kick off to get stuck in - they can now dole out cards from the moment that the pitch inspection is concluded!

That should provide an excellent opportunity for Clattenspanner and his gang of dweebs to enact their revenge of the nerds fantasy from even before kick off. A look at last years cards table shows that Mike Dean won the much coveted Reddest Ref award with a whopping 12 dismissals, while Cranky Keith Stroud took the prize for most cards overall at 202 in 45 games!



The Hammers will need to be extra careful as last season was no Allardycian fair play heaven as Bilic's boys picked up a table-topping five red cards! (ED: Actually, Chelsea got six if you include Jose Mourinho's red at West Ham:-])

However, our referees will need to up their game if they want to compete on the international stage. Take Turkey, where last season's clash between Galatasarray and Trabonzspor ended in total farce as referee Bitnel sent off four Trabonzspor players, including Salih Dursun for mocking the referee by showing him the red card after the trigger happy ref dropped the card on the ground in his excitement!

After the match Dursun explained: "It was an injustice to play seven players against 12 players (he clearly felt that referee was helping Galatasaray). I showed the red card to the referee in order for Galatasaray to be 11 players"!


Dursun follows the example set by Paul Gascoigne who in 1995 jokingly handed back a mislaid yellow card to the referee during a match against Hibernian. Referee Dougie Smith failed to see the funny side of Gazza latest prank and duly yellow carded the card! What a cad!

1 comment:

  1. Gazza, still the best card in the pack. Such a waste.

    ReplyDelete

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