Unimaginative abuse, tactical whistling & circular red cards, with ex-referee Graham Scott

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21:34Charlie Eccleshare:Let's crack on with our Q &A. As I mentioned, some tremendous questions from our listeners, very much in the spirit of this podcast, which you're fully familiar with, thank God. Let's kick off with this from Patrick. Graham, how did you feel when they stopped putting the referee's hometown in brackets after their names on the TV coverage? I thought it was a nice personal touch. Before my time, they stopped doing that. But in my time, we did have the... It was in the programme. so it said it started off my hometown then it went then it went to oxfordshire and then eventually they took it out of there as well i mean we didn't particularly like the idea that people knew where we lived yeah it wasn't really high on our it was like when you went to non-league grounds and they helpfully put above your car parking space ref it's this one lads brilliant thanks yeah great yeah pro ref have really stepped up the security these days yeah okay next up I wanted to ask you about this something we featured on the pod recently which is refs almost sort of semi-consciously commentating on goals that they're presiding over here is Sam Barrett for Spurs versus Villa

22:51Charlie Eccleshare:I mean this ticks a lot of the boxes that you know supposedly against referees which is that they don't know the game and they're not human beings well well sam barrett has dispelled both of those in in one fell swoop yeah i did a bit of that i remember a goal that chelsea scored at wolves in a 5-2 win that was i was right behind it's absolutely amazing and i said down the comms that's the mori that uh yes that could be the goal of the season that and and the assistants weren't having it because it had gone in the middle of the goal so the goalkeeper had shifted a bit and um he then got caught by the swerve and then he said he can't have goal of the season if it and i'll go well if you're standing where i was that i thought i was better than you think it is from where you are yeah so we did have that chat i love the idea that in the var bunker charlie they're going just checking postage stamp just checking postage stamp yeah postage confirmed move on yeah that's very uh that's very cliche is like conversation or one be like oh he's hit he's hit that one with the swinger don't like it just don't like goals that hit with the swinger Doesn't look as good to me.

23:53Yeah, release that audio, Howard Webb.

23:55Charlie Eccleshare:We have to dwell on VAR, don't we, Charlie? We have to address it at early doors, don't we? Yes, we do. I mean, I've got various questions I want to ask, but this is a very particular one. You, I believe, were the first Premier League ref to stick with your decision when sent to the monitor. I was actually at the game as one of the few reporters. It was behind closed doors. It was Spurs-Brighton in 2020. Don't want to ask you about the particular decision, necessarily, even though Spurs fans will say Hojbjerg was fouled in the build-up. um but what is the refs then talk about that like what's the refereeing equivalent of ah the lads have all given me some banter for that one like did that did they was there like a chat about who's going to be the first ref to actually stick with their decision when sent to the monitor yeah i mean there was um year one we didn't go to the monitor which was really weird because i had a red card overturned at west ham that i couldn't believe what what do you mean it's not a red card really there was no they just got overturned with no yeah the vr came down down your headset and said you're overturning this one it's now a yellow and you can actually if you see the clip you can see me say twice are you sure really are you sure i still don't have it i still think it's a red but um you know that was his view so yeah you do you who's going to be first to stick wasn't really an issue but we knew it happened eventually but i then got some stick because i was wrong so someone had to do it but why over that one was the yeah yeah that was what I was was I remember people saying uh we picked the wrong moment as it were it must be a huge feeling of pressure to know that you you to feel that you want to do it because it's it happens so rarely now yeah it shouldn't happen really at all because the VR process is supposed to be any right-minded person looking at these replays you're just going to change their decision it you know it's so obvious it's it's clear and you know it's like off the scale you know it should be you know you'll just get to the screen and go yeah i managed to get that one wrong and then and change it so there shouldn't be times where the referee sticks but of course sometimes the ver stuff's up too so there has to be that safety net i suppose that's good it's good it's healthy next up a we're getting into pure cliches territory next daniel collins writes in and says what's the threshold for a card happy referee how many would you have to brandish per game for you to receive that label first up dave before we get stuck into that chat is card happy a single game thing or do you think it's like a sort of multi-game reputational aspect there are definitely referees who will have that reputation and i think particularly when it comes to like european games you might go oh we've got so and so tonight i think he's a bit card happy him but but but you also i think in a single game like particularly you know if I'm at Watford and you're in the EFL and I'm not as familiar with with the referees that we're getting we don't know we might not know their reputation or their their record across the season but if they're being card happy it could still be remarked upon in the moment so you're happy with it either way okay yeah so Graham what threshold are we working with here I mean card happiness in a single game how many cards are we talking probably north of six so four is quite common the average in the Premier League is just under four which has gone up quite a lot mine used to be two points something for a long time and then it drifted over three later on but that's because we've got so many mandatory yellow cards for things that now we have to give and they're much tighter on time certainly last season they were tighter on time this year they'll flip the decisions so the card count might come down a bit most I had I think was eleven in one game had four reds in a different game and put the manager in the stand and had some yellows as well.

27:33So that can happen. But I don't think you can have a flurry of reds though, can you? You can have a flurry of yellows, but they'd have to come in quick succession to be a flurry of reds. Those numbers are mad.

27:42Charlie Eccleshare:That's confetti status. That's way beyond start happy. That's absolute confetti. That's almost battle of wherever the match was played. Battle of the Brisbane Road, that was. Oh, yeah. Good to have a battle under your belt. Yeah, there needs to be more than 1 ,200 people there, I think, for it to really feel like a battle. FA Cup second round replays don't tend to attract the same status do they for some reason you've got the alliteration as well and it it was a curiosity because it was two all at 90 minutes with extra time and it finished 8-2 and nine aside so really quite curious what a game curious sequence of events that's too hectic you can't you can't enjoy that and a penalty manager in the stand player on the pitch after the final whistle he got another red card wow is that red That's a red flag, surely, for the assessor.

28:29If they're just looking at the score and their cards, they're going, what's happened here? He's lost control. Game is too big for me, obviously.

28:40Charlie Eccleshare:Next up, and this has always fascinated me too, it comes from Bitter Egg. He says, is there a threshold of familiarity for using players' first names or nicknames during games? Do you have to have refereed them before, or can you just assume that they're famous enough, it'll be okay? So, at what point do you feel comfortable or saying deck for Declan or something like that, or perhaps even something more adventurous. I was quite formal, but deliberately, thought consciously should be, and also try and treat both teams the same. The tough ones were cup games, so you'd get, I did Villa against Stevenage, well, I knew the Villa players won 2-11, but Stevenage, I knew won because he used to play for Swindon, that was it.

29:15Right. But then it went to numbers for both teams, to be seen to be fair, and it felt fairer. You don't want to be in that situation where, There was a clip of a few years ago now of the Athletics' Rashane Thomas called David Moyes Moyes in a press conference. And Moyes went, Moyes? I don't really know each other that well, do we? No, we don't. Also, Graham, I feel very vindicated there. And this gives insight to how precocious and annoying I was. But I remember in a school rugby match, the referee was a teacher at the school, as tended to happen. But he was calling all the players by their first names and that sort of thing.

29:52And I said to him, I was like, can you stop doing that? Like it reeks of favouritism. I think I actually said that. And he obviously didn't take it well. But, you know, I'm glad that you didn't do that, that you recognise that it's, you know, it might seem like favouritism.

30:08Charlie Eccleshare:I mean, Charlie, there are grey areas. I mean, some players essentially have nicknames thrust upon them that referees will have to go with, like Pepe Reina, for example. You're going to get referees going, all right, Jose Manuel, over here, please. So I don't know. Sometimes it's out of the referee's hands. So, but yeah, it's good to know that Graham was consistent with this. But yeah, numbers, that's very formal indeed. But it's also weird, though, to think that players, like somebody could be refereeing Messi in the World Cup and say, number 10. Excuse me, magic little man, could you come over here, please?

30:42I mean, I remember though, refs used to do that, though, with like, I remember like David Ellery quite ostentatiously, you know like asking Alan Shearer to turn around so he could like get his name and number and it was like I think you know his name and number don't you but it was very much no no one's special no one's different I don't know who you are kind of thing.

30:59Charlie Eccleshare:That's a lost art isn't it Graham the ordering a player to turn around for the number I guess it's all been digitized now rubbish. No well they made them put numbers in their shorts for that very reason so you could just glance down at their kind of well at their leg and get it that way but you yeah you did generally knew who they were obviously didn't have to ask for their names anymore um let's get stuck into some classic refereeing cliches uh charlie your first this was something that always stuck with me graham in an interview i read with pier luigi colina about 25 years ago and he took on this you know there's this idea that like a good referee is one you don't notice and he was like that's bullshit he's like if you've got to give three penalties you give three penalties you're going to get noticed for doing that but if you've got to do it you've got to do it i wondered sort of what you thought both about that but also just generally what are the kind of refereeing cliches and truisms that you know you think are the least and i suppose maybe most accurate i'm in the you don't notice the best ones camp i wanted to walk out of the stadium people not know i've been there or recognized me or any of that we did talk about putting our heads above the parapet if you've got to put your head above the parapet you there was a ruder version of that but um you you put different part of your body somewhere i can't remember what it was but you Cock on the block, was it Graham?

32:12Oh, it could have been. I hated that. I hated it. I never used it. I was much too posh, obviously. No, you talk about that kind of thing, about raising your profile. Interesting. But then hopefully getting your head back down below the parapet or off the radar, staying out of trouble. I mean, all the metrics about being a referee are basically a positive spin on a negative metric. so it is about it is about staying off the radar staying out of trouble not making a mistake never actually doing something positive to contribute to a better game it was it was always it was the opposite well it's interesting before because you mentioned i think you said that harrington was quite card happy that he you know he gave quite a lot of cards and you mentioned oh the opposite no he's he's not oh the opposite sorry no he had he was he was the oval card guy card sad so he didn't give many and you also said that you used to not give that many was that something was that almost then like a badge of honour to be a ref who didn't give many cards a little bit but I think more well I think my my philosophy was if you if you controlled the first bit of the game really well and you got the respect and understanding of the players what you're trying to do you tended to keep the card count low and now of course I thought I was doing that you'll ask the players I know the refs they might have a very different view but that was my objective but there's quite a range I mean you look at in last season Craig Pawson just over two and and Stuart Atwell's over four so that's quite a quite a difference and the refereeing similar fixtures it's not like they're being given you know there's no no easy games in the premier league i i i broad i

33:46Charlie Eccleshare:just love the broad kind of accepted wisdom that exists between co-commentators and referees where that that first 20 minutes are supposedly so important if you give a yellow card too early then that's it that's it the tone has been set when really it's just purely circumstantial right like things will happen and and you're just going to have to go with it but does that just not infuriate you a little bit like these these vague sort of bits of accepted wisdom that everyone just goes along with yeah and also this kind of thing is certain types of game got got to be reffed differently i mean there's a scintilla of truth in a bit of a big derby you don't want to go go with a big yellow for a kind of fairly minor shirt pull them halfway line but you wouldn't do that anyway so what it's not actually that different uh but yeah the the the going too early sometimes if a tackle's a tackle you're just giving him a card and that's the end of it.

34:35Charlie Eccleshare:A lot of these scenarios that we're going to talk about sort of paint a kind of lose-lose situation for a referee you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't but I think one of the classic ones that sums this up, there are situations where a referee will be praised for giving themselves some time to think about it but then conversely blamed for hesitating over a decision, which is better? There is a kind of sweet spot but there's the which I mentioned earlier and that you couldn't wait to give it was like well what do you want me to do okay well just I'm going to give this one in a sec just give me a moment just give me a moment and then then you'll be prepared to accept him more readily well what utter nonsense is that because as you say if you if you pause slightly oh he wasn't or you look at your assistant oh he's not so sure and then if you don't look at your assistant what's he there for what's the point of him you know so it is a classic no-win situation I'm broadly sympathetic towards the cause of referees, Dave, because I try and just sort of distance myself from the tribalism of it all.

35:32Charlie Eccleshare:But there's absolutely no doubt that I've uttered the words in my life, he couldn't wait to give it. It's visceral. It really does annoy a football fan. Completely. I think it's important as a football fan to be able to sort of have both parts of your brain able to function at the same time. I think, you know, within reason and with with respect, Graham, when you're in the stands at a football match, part of the experience is, on occasion, letting your frustration out of the referee from a safe distance. But also being able to be rational enough to not think, you know, to not go down the conspiracy theory rabbit holes and to not kind of lose your mind when looking at referees.

36:12All you have to do, if you've ever been, as I said on the pod the other day, if you've ever, like, even just run the line for five minutes at a kids game or an amateur game, Like, you see how bloody difficult it is. So you have to be able to appreciate the position you're in. But also, yes, sometimes I will have called you a wanker, probably. Well, most people have.

36:34Charlie Eccleshare:It's a good company, I imagine. Here's an easy one for you, Graham. Have you ever received, Chinwanda asks, a Christmas card from a Premier League manager? No. Oh, the Christmas card just doesn't exist. That's good to know. if you did would there be a disciplinary process that would have kicked off would it be investigated if you received you'd have to declare that surely you'd have to declare it I would declare it if it ever happened of course they don't know our home addresses anymore just send it to Tring and hope it finds its way they're all from up north now you have to send it to Wigan you've got more chance nowadays Enzo Morescu used to use Moonpig hasn't even signed it himself yeah yeah it's all mooping these days really takes the human aspect out of it which is good um obviously refs i'm sure will say things like you know i remember mistakes and whatever and i felt terrible about them but do you have games you look back on and you think fuck i refereed it so well that day like i played a blinder and as a fun you know can refs get into like a sort of flow state where you're just like i am seeing this so well like i'm just I'm having a great game here.

37:44You can, and actually we should work harder at achieving that, but instead everyone is just obsessed with error. So all of our feedback loops are about potential mistakes, could have been mistakes, near misses. There's no positivity anywhere in the room ever around how comes we did so well here? How comes this referee is such a great game? How comes you did get in that flow state? And instead we cross the white line and pick the ball off the plinth, as we do, just hoping that nothing goes wrong.

38:14Charlie Eccleshare:How did you feel about the plinth coming into the football universe? Was that just a really unwelcome addition to the ceremonial act of being a referee? Yes and no. I wasn't really that bothered, but it did feel like a kind of, what's that about? I mean, what is it? It's just about getting another bit of sponsorship money, isn't it? I mean, I don't know what City sold those for. Oh, well, there were some who did. I said they just picked the ball up, but there were one or two. there was one who picked the ball up and kissed it which was was rather that doesn't feel like a very graham scott thing to do to me no no kees you must have hated that yeah did you ever have your name stitched into your boots scotty i was given a pair by nike before the efl cup final which had my initials on we all were the four of us and i never wore them because i felt it was too it was too pretentious or whatever yeah make it about me yeah i think the initials are a classy touch for a cup final i don't like that yeah um yeah maybe but i i think we all either didn't wear them or i think um black them out so they were they were white on black uh we always wear black boots of course so got the old sharpie out and scrubbed them out but i did keep i've still got the boots but i'll never wear them it's a bit daft uh no such commercial reluctance on this podcast, however, because this episode is brought to an association with NordVPN.

39:35Charlie Eccleshare:For those who don't know, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It secures your connection, protecting your personal information and online activity, especially on public Wi-Fi. A VPN can also make your phone or laptop appear as if it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while traveling. If you want to try NordVPN for yourself, go to nordvpn.com slash cliches, and our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. It's the best discount available. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee and the link is also in our podcast description if you need it.

40:07Charlie Eccleshare:We'll be back very shortly.

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41:46Charlie Eccleshare:Welcome back to Football Clichés This is our Q &A with former referee Graham Scott. A reminder that Dreamland episode 32 is out now. It's our fifth edition of the Voices of Football. Peter Brackley, Gary Neville and Simon Jordan. This was huge fun to record. To listen to that and all of our other Dreamland episodes, just go to dreamland.footballcliches.com. Now, an inevitable part of refereeing discourse, Graham, is the chance that referees are subjected to on a traditional basis. These feel like they haven't evolved a lot. I mean, here are the kind of holy trinity of refereeing chants, as I understand them.

42:22Charlie Eccleshare:The referee's a wanker. You're not fit to referee, and you don't know what you're doing. Which one cut the deepest? You're not fit to referee. Bit pompous, though, isn't it? I always thought that one came with a bit of menace, whereas You Don't Know What You're Doing was sometimes sung in that kind of slightly jaunty. Yeah, that's true. You know, you're struggling to do your laces up, you know, or something kind of in a moment with things maybe going slightly wobbly, but not really affecting the match. And referees are wankers, just outright abusive. Well, you just bat that away. But you're not fit to referee sometimes came with a kind of sense of, yeah, my profile is too high here, and I maybe haven't judged my involvement quite right, and I need to back off.

43:05So of those three, but incredible that in my 17 years, is they never came up with a new chant. I mean, everything, a new player rocks up or there's a new record comes out in the hit parade and we got a new tune to sing it to. There's incredible creativity. But when it comes to ref, it's just those three. And very tedious. I mean, it's just boring. I mean, I think refs deserve better. I think we deserve better insults than that. Certainly something innovative would be nice.

43:33Charlie Eccleshare:I mean, well, this is the point. I mean, do you think, Charlie, we're at a point now where some referees are so well-known and probably have been for a good decade, you're Mike Deans and you're Klattenbergs of this world, surely we should have name-specific chants for referees because some fans are so obsessed with certain referees hang-ups about certain clubs. I would say one variant which is quite specific to Michael Oliver, I would say, is it's not about you. That gets sung to him. Yeah, and I don't think that... That maybe gets sung to others, but I think it's sung to him with particular menace, to use Graham's word from before.

44:05Like, it does feel like that is quite particular. But yes, names hasn't happened.

44:10Charlie Eccleshare:Of the famous three, Dave, you're not fit to referee. It could be construed as saying you are not physically up to it for this game. And if we... I want to refer to a bit of feedback from the doyen of UK referees, which is Keith Hackett, who we always enjoy hearing from. Here's a bit of feedback he gave on a blog a long, long time ago. He says, Now on to Football League referees. On Saturday, I watched Trevor Kettle at the League One match between Sheffield United and Swindon Town and this referee is living in the past. His body mass is unacceptable. His decision-making lacked credibility. He should not be putting whistle to mouth.

44:46Charlie Eccleshare:It was embarrassing. What an incredible set of words that is. Whistle to mouth is like pen to paper. That's so good. Whistle to mouth. Finally decided to put whistle to mouth. Hackett was a big fan of yours, of course, Graham, wasn't he? Well, he was on the interview panel that put me on in 2008 on the Football League at which the first question was, are you married and do you have any children which is quite an interesting take um for a refereeing interview wasn't it employment law would have a field day with that yeah um yeah i hack it we kind of went up and down with me i think i did i did screenshot one tweet where he said i was getting better with age but of course that could be from a very low level that's great um i can't believe there's a referee called trevor kettle that's ridiculous if charlie is that a referees no i mean that's just no that sounds like a character in a children's book he really does absolutely about whistling away presumably yeah the body mass thing is is notable though it's one of the things that sticks out if you do watch um old premier league years or games from further back when you know you look at referees and there are some that really stick out and it's mad to think that referees who were refereeing elite level matches at the time thought that they could get away with it like they look some of them look like they couldn't literally couldn't do a park run and they're doing a ref they're doing a professional game of football in the premier league no honestly but like it's and you like what what was going through their mind that they thought they could be that out of shape and still be a referee yeah the the body we had our body fat taken every month uh where calipers would come out of training camps and we you know take our shirts off and that but not in front of everyone else but uh fortunately not on the stage although that's a good idea actually um yeah we did have that done and the numbers came down massively so when I started on the line the average was in low 20 % body fat wow and now and now it's kind of 12 and 13 among the refs they're really kind of all super lean but yeah there was a time there's some roly-polies out there um it it is it does seem to be quite a harsh environment for referees in the in the professional era and one one big thing that happens to a referee after a big high profile mistake is that they're stood down for the next set of Premier League games or even worse demoted to the championship for a weekend do you think do you think that's the right way to do things because what does that really achieve to just stop a referee working for a weekend is that really going to make them better at their job no it just creates a culture of fear and one in which you don't you know as I was saying before you really want to be stepping onto the field positively thinking you're going to do well here and not, oh, I do hope I don't stuff up and nothing else.

47:27Especially if you've made other mistakes recently. You can't afford to have two or three on the bounce. You've now got to put in a really good performance. So I don't think it's conducive to high performance. It just feels like a revenge mission to say, well, there you go. There's a pound of flesh. Accountability, that's what they call it. That's what they call it, yeah.

47:46Charlie Eccleshare:Charlie, it does raise the question, though. You know when players get themselves sort of booked deliberately so that they can get Christmas off? Like, it feels like a referee could engineer this situation. Whoops! Sorry about that one. Don't want to do the Boxing Day game, yeah. It's certainly doable if procedures follow. I have some very suspicious yellow cards one game over Christmas. Really? Yeah, 89th and 90 plus 2 or something where, oh, we miss New Year's Day. Oh, well, that's a shame. But kicking the ball away randomly, things like that. Of course, the ultimate adjudicator of refereeing performance these days is Ref Watch on Sky Sports News.

48:27Charlie Eccleshare:I'm convinced at this point its cultural significance is such that referees must now watch it and take note. I mean, Jay Bothroyd is now essentially the nation's chief referee assessor, isn't he? I used to watch it sporadically. It's such a terrible format. and it's so, I mean, they've got, I mean, I know Dermot, I don't want to bash him, but I mean, he last refereed in 2007, I think it was. Right. He didn't even have, he just about had headsets, never been a VAR, didn't have any of the hassle that we have now. And they put him up there and said, oh, well, the VAR would have been thinking this.

49:05I think, well, I'm not so sure you're the qualified to comment, Dermot. And as for Jay Bothroyd, he's like, oh, he's just, he's just so tiresome. by the letter of the law these laws that you're quoting have you ever read them? you know, have you downloaded them off the website ever? you do realise they are available you know, it's completely off the mark most of the time and Sky should be doing generally alright to refs actually Sky but that feature is supposedly the balance I'll knock it on the head lads because it's not working it's interesting that you've hit upon that there because this thing comes up periodically, often touted by ex-players, that some players should be fast-tracked to be referees because they understand the game, they've played it, blah, blah, blah.

49:55And I'm interested on your take on that. I mean, I think I can guess what you'll probably say. It does seem quite baffling to me that professional footballers have spent their whole career being refereed in thousands of games and that they come away from it still thinking that they do a better job officiating the games than the referees themselves. Surely you should have more of an appreciation for rest if you've played the game. But I would love to see it, though. It would be a novelty to see... Jay Bothroy, ref of Premier League. Lewis Dunk retires next season from Brighton and becomes a Premier League referee.

50:25He's not a referee, though. You can't have Lewis Dunk. I'd love to see it. There is a programme at the moment being run by ProRef with the PFA to get a group of ex-players through as refs. But the feedback I've had from other refs, so take that as you wish, is that none of them are really any shakes at all and they're really struggling and none of them are going to make it. And these are people who've been selected and have been through lots of training, intensive work, and they kind of give them these kind of relatively high profile games, but it's like, yeah, it's an under-19 tournament. I mean, that's going to be a sanitised environment.

50:58Most people could ref it. They ref themselves. Those games are often they're not. I mean, most of the refs in the Premier League did play. Quite a few of them were kind of academy standard at the time, before academies. because of our age and a five-a-side game among some of the refs would be quite decent. But some of them didn't. Some of them were pretty hopeless as footballers and chose to be refs. But you don't need to have... I always think the analogy I always use is, well, if you've got to have played to have a credibility in football, what are we going to do with Jose Mourinho? Because he didn't play.

51:33What are we going to do with Arsene Wenger, who was a hopeless player? What are we going to do with Rafa Benitez, who retired at 20?

51:39Charlie Eccleshare:it's his whole referees bite back there's a whole list of them you know they never played and yet you wouldn't say to Jose Mourinho well I don't know why I don't know why would anyone listen to you mate you never kicked them all in your life I think Sergio Ramos did make that point to him you know it was like what do you know you never played how much advice do refs get about what they should watch how much they should be on social media and all of that because presumably you could just drive yourself completely mad the advice is to stay off not to post and let i mean there was a kind of a mixed message up for a little while where they they wanted us to encourage us to be kind of more human and to promote refereeing but at the same line you can't really have a presence because if you are you're just going to get battered so we tended to stay off i mean some of the refs they live on social media just that's the generation never known any different i'm not a bit older i i it was kind of came to me later in life and and they struggle but it's not really your own experience your own relationship with social media it's your family and friends because they're obviously going to be on there and they're going to see and hear it and that's what's that's what's difficult because you you can't protect everyone all the time um onto the subtler art forms of refereeing at the highest level um the body language of referees something we've always been utterly fascinated with on this podcast um To pick one at random to start with, I've always been truly bewildered by the mid-penalty decision crouch that a referee will perform.

53:05Charlie Eccleshare:It's usually for a tangle of legs where legitimately they might have to sort of engineer a position of their body to see what's going on. But it always goes on a bit too long. It's almost like after the incident happens, they're still crouching away. And it feels like, I don't want to say performative because it feels like quite a loaded word, but it feels like, who's it for, this crouch? i think it is performative that it's for the crowd i have been looking at i have studied this incident at great length and i am very sure now that my decision will therefore be correct and accurate um and then vr comes on and says actually you better can have a look at that again

53:45i don't i don't think i did it very much but i probably there's probably a clip out there of

53:49Charlie Eccleshare:me doing exactly that i'll spend the rest of the day looking for that don't worry it'll be good fun great question from Ross next Graham he says what's more satisfying a swift and seamless leg split to allow the ball to run through your legs or the planted feet body curve to avoid being hit by an aerial pass leg split definitely comfortable comfortable with easy easy answer felt quite in the moment if you timed it right felt quite almost quite good quite pleased with that one you know jumping over the ball very undignified yes especially in big big long black socks there's something yeah looks poor um and you know always felt clumsy and clunky but the older i got the harder it was to do the leg split so now we had to seek other options generally stay further back and keep out of the way altogether was probably what was going on absurd question from daryl next he says simon hooper has a yellow card which he can inexplicably open into a book where do you get those i've never seen that before he must have had it for years is because I don't know where you get them from anymore, but they used to sell them.

54:52A lot of us had books that had yellow and red cards in. So when you got it, there were people, older refs from yesteryear would teach us that you're keeping the player guessing. He don't know what colour's coming. You're getting where you are. I'm not sure that never worked really. But yeah, Hooper has got that. I don't know where he got it from. He's the only one who has. I've not seen anyone use one for years.

55:15Charlie Eccleshare:He's got his own little sort of black market card shop going on. This is fantastic. Another one that keeps people on the edge of their seats, Charlie, is the classic has the referee given a goal kick or a penalty? That has a real almost pantomime kind of tantalising suspense about it. It feels like a flaw in refereeing body language to me, Charlie. Yeah, did you have to make sure, did you go with the tactic of very deliberately trying to point at the penalty spot to avoid this confusion? Yes, you try and move, keep moving, so it became obvious what you were doing, so you weren't going to run towards a goal kick.

55:48So you keep on the move. We had different, through my career, it kept changing. So if you, the famous game at Palace, Palace Brown with his five penalties, Kelvin Morton's the ref, and he, in the 80s, and he hurtles off to the corner of the penalty area every time, like, on the goal line, and then puts his hands behind his back, chest out. Right, if you want to come and dispute it, you can, but you're going to get a card if you do. Then we had this thing where you go to the spot and point forwards. Then we had, go to a neutral space. but I did try and make it clear it wasn't a goal kick, if there was any doubt.

56:21But yes, it is an anomaly that you effectively are pointing to the same bit of grass. But that's the thing, sometimes it feels like the referees, and I think this is where the confusion comes in sometimes between goal kick and penalty, is that the referees don't appear to actually be pointing to the spot, they're kind of pointing just above it. Do you know what I mean? Airspace. Yeah. There's a very subtle difference. There is a difficulty if you're standing very close to the spot where you do point, because you've kind of always got to point. There's one where Mike Dean's kind of pointing at his own feet.

56:52Yeah. Which looks really odd. What's going on there?

56:55Charlie Eccleshare:Yeah, the technique of running over to the spot, standing on it, and pointing forward just seemed utterly absurd to me. I would never encourage that. But I think, Charlie, I think the solution is it's on the side of the goal kick, really, where you've got to be way more casual. You've got to basically just sort of stroll away with your arm vaguely pointing towards the goal. No one's going to mistake that for a penalty there. Yeah, that's true, actually. If you're sort of running away, like I'm carrying on with the game, and sort of flick your hand behind you, maybe that's the way to do it. In the VAR era, now obviously you see a lot of the penalties awarded after having looked at the screen.

57:30Is there any sort of official or even sort of, not official, but kind of accepted ways to actually differentiate between? Because the goal kick, is it palmed down, and then you see the you often see the var penalties awarded with like the palm it's not a point it's a palm still but it's the side rather than the rather than a flat palm do people talk about this stuff or do you just make it up not that one no that's a good point though because i think you're right i think there is a kind of palm to the side palm down there was one in the world cup where the referee alireza fagani from uh iran stroke australia stuck with his on-field decision and pointed for a goal kick yeah which was bizarre because they're like oh even i thought well it's an obvious penalty I was in the stadium for that one and everyone was really confused everyone around me thought it was a penalty yeah yeah I'm not surprised but um yeah we haven't discussed the there was a discussion of how you return to the field to deliver your decision now you announce it so I guess you've got to try and create that bit of space for you to say we're going to try and make up well think of a form of words should we say but yeah we had that kind of thing of how you return to the field and point to the spot and it's sometimes you I mean the screen at Wolves is almost down the other end.

58:40I give a penalty once there on a VAR check. And it's like, the penalty spot's about 60 yards away. Why can't we point out anything at this point? Pace yourself on this long run.

58:52Charlie Eccleshare:That feels like a massive oversight in stadium architecture. I want to talk about the ultimate act of refereeing body language, Graham, which is the totting up process. The act of pointing out various areas of the pitch that a player has committed fouls in order to justify the booking for cumulative fouling that you're about to give them big question here is it is the order of pointing based on what's nearest so you're just doing it on a 360 degrees situation or are you doing it chronologically if your brain can can sort of accommodate it which which were you going to go for uh going for neither as in it's just random pointing to show yeah it is i mean it's certain i mean i i might have kind of vaguely made sure it's at the right end of the field but it'd be one two three so no no chronology and no nothing that specific you know if you did the heat map or whatever the equivalent would be where the fouls were you probably find they were in completely different places i'm i'm disappointed to hear this because i once studied peter banks's totting up process uh for fulham home game and he got two of the four within half a degree so he should have been in the he should be on the fifa list he was and that's probably why Yeah, that's exactly why.

1:00:00Charlie Eccleshare:These are the margins. These are the fine margins. Other niche refereeing things. I mean, I frankly couldn't wait to ask you this, which is why I've left it so late in the podcast. Whistling lengths. It's definitely a thing, isn't it? If you give an easy foul early in the game, or even perhaps even late in the game, if it's an easy foul, a nice short, sharp whistle basically placates everybody. Everyone just goes, yeah, I'm all right. I'm not going to argue with you now. The game will go on. Yeah, little peep for that. We always talk to make the whistle talk. So we had this strange thing where the little peep would be for a kind of minor offence and then the whistle will get longer for the more serious.

1:00:37But also, if you have that thing where the home fans are really restless now, you've just given three in a row against them and they didn't like at least one of them. And now a fourth free kick has come along. That was going to be the shortest whistle you could muster. You'd almost hope no one heard it, but other than the two players nearest, and they'd kind of get up and get on with it. And the freak would be sitting so quickly that people even wondered if a foul had been awarded. And then we had this thing around, if it was a really bad tackle, you would blow your whistle hard and run in because it would stop the retaliation.

1:01:13But what we found after a time was that players who thought, well, that's just a foul, so what's the ref hurtling towards it? you think, oh, there must be a war about to break out. Everybody go and have a look. All of a sudden, you had 16 players around. Oh, that you'd started. So we were told not to do that after a while.

1:01:32Charlie Eccleshare:You did that on your debut, actually. Dean Marnie sort of flew into a challenge. I think it was on Kieran Clarke. And you raced over to plant yourself between the two belligerents. I thought that worked well. It did actually work well on that occasion. But the thing was, there was no other players anywhere near it. So if you're going to be first in, you can kind of do it and get away with it. But as soon as you're the third or fourth to arrive, you've got to back off. I love the idea of making the whistle talk. So for full time, would that be, that's full time? You've got to get the undulation in.

1:02:09Well, I differentiate, I think most do, between half time and full time. So half time, you get two whistles. So you have a short one and then... and a slight kind of upbeat to it uptick to it at the end there you go let's have a little break uh let's go to a cup tea and come back uh shortly and then full time would would very much depend on the game so wow if there was some if there was late drama and it was a play to the crowd thing i guess there's no way of denying it for me anyway um there was a late drama involving the home team coming coming back late and bradford leeds i did where bradford came from behind him in 2-1 full house at Valley Parade fantastic night EFL Cup game and you think right I am going to I'm going to milk this here the ball's kind of up in the air in the halfway line and you go right here we go and you know everyone's kind of looking at you go on blow blow blow so you're going to then it gets the full three long blasts and the crowd obviously gets go up go up with it

1:03:04Charlie Eccleshare:I never ever ever thought that that would be situation dependent that's incredible that's the that's my big takeaway from this game for this podcast speaking of things that referees You must just innately know are about to happen. Ironic cheers. I mean, you must be braced for an ironic cheer. You've already established that, you know, if you give four free kicks for a team in a row, you have to manage the situation. When you have a situation where you finally give a decision for the other team, you must just let that wash over you, really. You do. The temptation is... I mean, I watched a game...

1:03:34I'm a Swindon fan, as you may know. I watched a game at Swindon many years ago where the referee was Ray Lewis from Great Bookham, which is what he was probably best known for. and he did the thing where he eventually gave Swindon a free kick and the crowd did the ironic cheer including me probably I'd have been about 12 and he did a very big theatrical bow and got a big laugh and the fans were fair enough you know referee with personality couldn't do that now oh no we can't be having that I mean that would be completely unacceptable it really would

1:04:06Charlie Eccleshare:we'd have tremendous fun with it I don't think there's a current referee who has that in their locker, Charlie. Well, it's Mike Dean would have been the one to do that. Yeah, of course. He's got that sort of theatrical flourish. The now disgraced, blacklisted Mike Dean. Yeah, yeah. Here's a question from TB Graham. He says, can you feel a little bit of sympathy for foreign players who don't have the best English, maybe doing the imaginary card wave, and that they shouldn't be punished for it compared to, say, Jordan Henderson being in your face communicating, you know, the exact sentiment and not getting any punishment?

1:04:38Charlie Eccleshare:Do you think language barriers should be taken into account for imaginary card waving i don't know why england has this thing about imaginary cards that no one else seems to have i don't really get it myself i mean it's a bit unedifying granted but as you say players have come up to you all the time going you're not going to book him then ref or how many more or fundamentally the same any danger absolutely any danger so i never quite understood it why we had to be so and and you've it's quite actually quite difficult to spot sometimes you're dealing with an incident where you're thinking oh is this yellow or red and you're trying to gauge the player reaction and in the corner of your eye someone's waving a hand you and then you'll get called in so you missed this imaginary card concentrating on something else something more important here and also you come away from a reckless tackle a yellow card for you because you you'd committed a foul that was borderline red or a yellow card for you because you kind of did an imaginary glove at me or so it's just like gloved hand at me so yeah i mean really weird i I don't understand it, but it is always a cultural thing when players are news in the Premier League.

1:05:42I mean, we've had them in the first month of the season, several players getting yellow cards for that. Graham, can I ask you, the mention of Jordan Henderson there reminds me of something I've thought about for a long while, which is I have this theory with referees, I call it the Dan Byrne theory, which is that if you're big, British, seem like a good lad, you do get refereed a little bit more leniently and differently. And I'm thinking, like someone like him, who's really like a really good guy, versus someone like Bruno Fernandes, who looks like a huge pain in the arse to ref. How much does, I mean, obviously it's hard to know exactly, how much does that affect a ref if you genuinely just like someone on a personal level?

1:06:17And do you get, do pro ref talk to you about like unconscious biases and how to kind of grapple with the fact that you might have feeling towards a player from a previous game where they, you know, were really nasty to you or whatever? The second part of that question, nothing. not that I was ever in a room to discuss around whether or not about unconscious bias around individuals or even teams or teams yeah yeah um which feels crazy to me but yeah well there's lots of things that are there's more than that um but um in terms of the individuals I mean yes you are influenced by absolutely you are that's because we're human beings too and you You are.

1:06:58It always amazes me, generally in football, that I was in the professional game for 17 years as a ref, three years as an assistant, and I never saw any other tactics other than just shout at the ref, shout at the ref, shout at the ref, and hopefully he'll buckle. And if we batter him long enough, then eventually we might get something go our way. And you think, well, actually, that's not going to work. It's actually, if anything, for me, it was counterproductive. The person who was generally quite a decent bloke and was generally well-behaved and generally spoke to me in a reasonable way, probably did get the benefit of the doubt every now and again.

1:07:31And why not? You know, why any different? But yeah, I don't understand why the philosophy of football hasn't adapted to getting to know the officials as people, getting to know what makes them tick, getting to know their particular strengths and weaknesses, what they're fussy about, what they're more relaxed about. None of that seems to be going on at all. Well, it's funny you say that. I remember having an epiphany a few years ago while playing. I was like, maybe, yeah, if I'm nice to refs rather than constantly arguing with them, I will get more from them. And yeah, it did seem to work by and large.

1:08:01You know, because players try and influence you. Of course they do. And what I detected, when you get refs, you might play in a cup final or whatever, and you get like, oh, as a treat, you get like a better ref than you're used to. And the big thing I noticed was just the authority they had. You were basically, they might make as many wrong decisions, but you were kind of scared. You were just scared of them. So that seemed like a huge thing. But with VAR, that seems such a different skill. Like that skill set is gone. It comes down to, you know, it's not about that. It's just about like precision of decision making.

1:08:33And I just wonder what you think of that disconnect because it makes VAR. Yeah, it makes reffing under VAR a little more difficult, actually, because you, up until even the championship, certainly up to League One, League Two, isn't really whether you're right or not. It's whether people believe you. It's whether people have got confidence in you. And I remember being fourth official to a referee in a Milton Keynes-Dons game way back when. In fact, they may even have been Wimbledon, probably MK-Dons just. And I think he got every decision right in the game, but no one was having him. No one was having him.

1:09:03And he had no, he inspired no confidence at all. Football league ref. And at the end, you know, two later, he got removed from the list because the club marks just kept coming in as being, we're not having him. We're not having him. And you get, but then you get on the Premier League, it's no longer whether you're right. It's no longer, sorry, it's no longer whether people believe it's whether you're right and the pictures prove it and it took a few years for some of the refs never quite got their heads around it that you can't stand on the pitch now and double down on your decision and say to a player look i'm right you're wrong go away because in 30 seconds time someone's going to come in here and go actually the player's right here and you can't you know stick a yellow card up for dissent and then go oh actually you were right well you can but it doesn't sit right does it you know you get a card for someone disputing an incorrect decision it's like yeah they shouldn't do it but nonetheless so it does change the skill sets and you're now having to i you know kind of qualify what you say all the time well from where i was it looked like a foul therefore i've given a penalty they are checking it because players to this day despite now what are we now year seven or eight of vr is it being checked is it being checked of course oh my god do you not do you know how many times yeah you hear that the fans after every year and And they didn't even check it.

1:10:19And it's like, they check everything. They just tell us this all the time. On the subject of dissent, I think we had a question from a listener about this, but this has always amazed me as well, fascinated me as well, rather. When watching a game on TV, when you see a player quite clearly tell a referee to fuck off while standing pretty close to the referee, what's the line between getting away with it and you deciding, no, hang on, actually, no, I'm going to book you for that? Again, the Dan Burnlaw. I was on the gate with Dan Byrne. Yeah, I think he called Anthony Taylor a knobhead, which seemed to be...

1:10:59I mean, you can hear down the VR mic, you can hear a little bit from what the ref can hear. I may have misheard I may be doing Lewis a disservice I suspect not but the only player I sent off for what he said was at Millwall and it was context driven I think because there was a potential foul in midfield Millwall then had an attack and had a shot that went wide for a goal kick and the player turned to me and he said you thick cunt and the cunt offended but the thick cut through I just wasn't and it was it was curious about it was like I can't I didn't even I couldn't wait to give it I didn't think about what I was I just went red I just went bang you know and really weird situation the distinguishing factors for me was have they had a chance to think about it so in that case yes he had the ball's going out for a goal kick this potential foul which has led to nothing was moments several you know seconds ago you've had a chance to reprocess what you're going to think and what you're going to say.

1:12:07So if it's in the moment, if it's what we loosely call passion, which is nonsense, but nonetheless we kind of forgive, then we tend to be more lenient, obviously. But I do think all refs are too lenient with that sort of nonsense, so we should be tougher. But of course, if you're the one who does it, then if you ever do actually be the one who sends a player off what they say it's oh well you know where's the consistency and you know you've got to be able to take it and it's a passionate game and you've got to have a thicker skin than that ref you know and all that stuff it just comes back on you and you become the story for a fortnight and you just think oh if i go if i just didn't hear or see that well we can all move on because long term that creates all sorts of problems for the game uh including in grassroots football do you remember jubelingham said um you got sent off playing for el madrid for saying fuck off and he then claimed it was directed at himself rather than at the ref which again i can relate to that i've seen that many times even at amateur level player will be like fuck off or fuck you and it's like no i'm saying it to myself there's a referee i worked with when i first started who when the secretaries and came this is very low level non-league football he kept when the secretaries came in with the team sheets he said just to let you know there are three words i'm not prepared to accept bastard cheat and cunt i'm not having those on my field if anyone says those words i'm sending them off and we then had a five minute conversation about other words that may or may not be allowed which became completely surreal.

1:13:31That's fine. What happens if one of my players are in the heat of the moment?

1:13:37Charlie Eccleshare:I want a published list. I want it from ProRev. This listing should be mandated. But yeah, we're in a classic good process lads situation there. Basically, the cunt was the studs on the shin but the thick was the premeditation of the challenge. This all works superbly. My last question I wanted to ask you, Graeme, is i'm 40 years old and every now and again i've been flirting with the idea of taking my refereeing qualifications whatever i've managed sunday league team i'm sort of my playing days are rapidly disappearing over the horizon if i what would i have to do like let's say i was like really good i turned turned out that i was just like prodigiously talented as a referee and i'd never discovered that until this point how far could i get up the pyramid as a 40 year old person taking my refereeing badges now maybe the most hypothetical question i've ever been asked um so how far could you get 40 probably not very i mean you you could get to but i'm the best though but i'm the best you've ever seen by the way this hypothetical question is i'm i am kalina level where do you live in the country east london roughly well you've got no chance then but wow pro ref's unofficial policy is you've got to live within five miles of a rugby league ground to get the premier league and because they all are i mean i assume that's what it is um no but you wouldn't get very far um you would probably get to i'm not sure what the leagues are you might get to the eastern counties league or the lower reaches of the ismin league you might get a regional division of the ismin league i've made no mistakes ever i've read every game perfectly it would first of all someone's going to come and watch you to notice you and they don't tend to look at 40 year olds who are just starting.

1:15:21Yeah, okay. They would take, it would take your... You could vouch for me. Happily do so. That would make no difference. In fact, it would probably be counterproductive. You'd go, you'd spend at least two years doing what we call parks football. There's no quick, no shortcut really past that. You can sometimes get to what we call level four, which is the regional, I think the regional divisions, yeah, regional divisions of the Isthmian League, which for other parts of the country, regional divisions of the Southern League or the Northern Premier League's regional section you might get to do but you get to that by the time about 43 44 they like a bit of they might occasionally chuck an older ref into the promotion mix just to show that they don't they do diversity in other ways too you know but realistically no chance to be honest but wait

1:16:08Charlie Eccleshare:but wait what if we had a scenario where he gets to the highest level that you've just mentioned and he's in the crowd at say a Watford game the referee goes down injured then the fourth official comes on or whatever and there's a sufficient series of injuries which means they have to go to the crowd to get qualified referees come and do the game dave would be that man and let's say happen in the first 20 minutes he'd have 70 minutes of a flawless performance that's going to fast track him surely because he's going to get he's going to get noticed then the assessor's going to have to presumably assess him would he get assessed in that situation um he wouldn't be assessed at Watford.

1:16:45No. I don't know who they send to Championship Games these days. They don't get assessed in the Championship. They do a post-match review on video.

1:16:54Charlie Eccleshare:Oh, man. And he wouldn't be in the system. I have to wait until they get promoted, I'm afraid, Dave. Sorry.

1:17:03Charlie Eccleshare:There we go. Well, that's probably the best hypothetical thing we've ever done. But it's not all about getting the decisions right, Graham. This final question comes from Zach Henson. He says, not a question. actually, but thank you so much for awarding West Ham a penalty against Stoke in December 2017 after a dive by Manuel Lanzini. I know you were criticised for that decision, but I had a great time in the away end and a fantastic memory with my dad was created that day. Respect. It wasn't a dive. He just initiated the contact very little. Ah, yeah, there we go. Everybody wins. He got a two-game retrospective ban, didn't he?

1:17:38He did. It's a landmark case. Well, there you go. Everybody wins. I bet VAR would have said it wasn't a clear and obvious error as well nowadays. But no, I'm clinging on to that decision as long as I can.

1:17:50Charlie Eccleshare:Graeme, it's been an absolute pleasure to have a former Premier League referee on our podcast for the first time. I've learned a hell of a lot, especially about situation-specific full-time whistles. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshire. Thank you. Thank you, Graeme. That was great. Thanks to you, future Premier League referee David Walker. Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening. We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.

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