Seeing Red. Graham Poll

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СКАЧАТЬ because I felt so downcast and devalued. Looking back, missing that game would have sent out the wrong message. It would have created the impression that I had been suspended because of the Chelsea accusations. So it was perhaps fortunate that I was told that I had to go ahead and referee the fixture at Everton. I would have to tough it out. Perhaps it would be a nice, incident-free match. Not a chance.

      In the twentieth minute Everton appealed for a penalty when Andy Johnson was tackled. It looked like a fair challenge to me, so I span away from the incident to follow play. I was aware that James McFadden was chasing after me but I was concentrating on the game. Then, as clear as anything, I heard McFadden shout, ‘You f***ing cheat!’

      His team-mate, Tim Cahill, was near me and grabbed my arm. He said, ‘Don’t do it, Pollie.’ Cahill knew, McFadden knew and I knew what the Scot had said.

      Whatever nonsense people say about me seeking controversy, I ask you to believe that the last thing I needed that night was more back page headlines. But McFadden had run thirty or forty yards to call me a cheat. It was not a spontaneous, heat-of-the-moment remark. Other players had heard it.

      Referees hate being called a cheat. The whole foundation of refereeing is that you make honest decisions. You want to get those decisions right – you strive to get them right – but if there are mistakes, they are honest mistakes. I would have betrayed my profession if I had not sent off McFadden. So I did.

      The ground erupted. It had to be a home player, didn’t it? And Everton manager David Moyes proved a major disappointment. Before the match, during my warm-up, he came over and said, ‘Don’t let them get to you, Graham. We all know you are the best referee.’ Yet after the match he staged a theatrical stunt at the media conference. He produced McFadden, who denied that he had called me a cheat. Everton’s case was that the player had said ‘f***ing shite’ rather than ‘f***ing cheat’. So that was all right then! But I know what he said.

      Moyes told the assembled media, ‘Once again we have a situation where Graham Poll says a player says one thing and the player says he said something different. Who do you believe?’ That ‘once again’ comment was a reference to the Chelsea accusations.

      After reviewing the match report – which included the explanation that McFadden had been dismissed for calling me a cheat – Everton decided not to appeal against the decision. So I was once again exonerated.

      The assessor, Mike Reed, thought I’d had a ‘brilliant’ game. But, when I got back to my hotel, a group of Everton fans did not share that view. By then they had probably heard the Everton version of McFadden’s abuse, so they spat out some expletives of their own at me.

      Next morning, when I turned on my mobile, there was a text message and a voicemail from Keith Hackett, manager of the referees’ Select Group. He was in Switzerland at a UEFA meeting. He had instructed me to call him urgently ‘about a financial irregularity regarding car sponsorship’.

      A what? I could not believe it. I phoned UEFA and demanded that they dragged Keith out of his meeting. With mounting paranoia, I shouted at my boss. I yelled, ‘What the hell is going on, Keith? Is this being pushed out by a club? Where is all this coming from?’ He asked me if I had a sponsored car. I said, ‘Why do you need to ask that? I have my own car and my bank statement can show that I pay for that car every month.’

      He said, ‘The Premier League press office have been phoned by a paper. The paper say they have a copy of an agreement showing that you have a sponsored car …’

      I replied, ‘Point one: I don’t have a sponsored car. Point two: is it wrong if I did? Dermot Gallagher has one with the sponsor’s name across the side. Keith, somebody is trying to do me, turn me over.’

      My boss went back to his meeting and I made a mental tally of recent events. I had been maligned by two Chelsea players, one of whom was the England captain. I had sent off an Everton player for questioning my integrity. His manager had questioned my veracity. I had been abused by supporters. I had been accused of some sort of financial impropriety. Oh, and I had been betrayed by the Football Association. All in just under four days.

      At breakfast I read a report of the Everton game in The Guardian. The writer said that if I was offended by being called a cheat, I needed to get out more. I did not read any other reports but I now know they were scathing. The Mirror’s headline was ‘POLL POTTY’ and, in a later edition of The Guardian, Dominic Fifield came to this considered appraisal of me:

      Already under investigation by the Football Association after allegations made against him by Chelsea’s disgruntled players in defeat on Sunday, his penchant for the theatrical is stripping him of credibility, his apparent desire to be the centre of attention – he was signing autographs prior to kick-off – unhelpful when he attempts to officiate. He would argue, with some justification, that it was McFadden’s folly which prompted the red card, but it appears that he revels in the notoriety such controversy affords him.

      Other reports pointed out that I was already in the spotlight over my ‘much-criticized decision’ to dismiss John Terry. Some reminded readers that Terry said he had been given two different versions of why he was shown a second yellow card and that team-mate Ashley Cole accused me of bias against his club. Very few reports bothered to add that I had denied the claims of Terry and Cole.

      In the car on the way home, I turned on the radio – to hear a phone-in caller repeat the comment that I had indulged in an autograph-signing session before the previous night’s game. The caller said, ‘He’s Mr Big Time Charlie, Mr Superstar who loves the attention.’

      The truth, if anyone is bothered about the truth, is that before the game and before the ground was open to the public, there were three or four lads by one of the dug-outs who were with one of the club officials. They asked for my autograph. I obliged. If I had not, then presumably I would have been a Big Time Charlie who thinks he is too important to bother with kids who want his autograph.

      On the way home, as I drove off the M6 toll road and pulled onto the M42, I looked at my eyes in the rear-view mirror because I knew they were brimming up with tears. Alone with my feelings, my emotions had spilled over.

      In any other period of my refereeing career, I would have been angered by the accusations and understandably upset by the crescendo of criticism, but I cannot imagine they would have made me tearful. Now, however, five rough days had brought confirmation of a truth I had been avoiding: I had fallen out of love with refereeing. Not football – I still loved football – but I no longer loved refereeing. That realization brought a dead weight of sadness.

      Refereeing had been so important to me for half my life, but I had refereed the Everton game really well and yet still had my competence and integrity doubted. It was clear to me that my credibility was gone forever. The disillusionment and deep, deep disappointment I felt as I drove home from the city of Liverpool was intense and oppressive.

      Earlier that week, on the morning of the Spurs–Chelsea game, Patrick Barclay had written a short little tribute to me as a ‘PS’ at the bottom of his column in the Sunday Telegraph. The brief article finished with two points which meant the world to me. I am not sure journalists realize how their words can hurt or heal. But, after referring to my three-card trick at the World Cup, Paddy wrote:

      Two thoughts arise. The first is that I’d rather have a referee who makes an isolated technical mistake than one as weak as Stefano Farina proved in Barcelona last Tuesday. The other is that if England’s players, many of whom did far worse than Poll in Germany, were ever to show half the character he has displayed since the resumption of hostilities, they might yet win something.

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