Seeing Red. Graham Poll

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СКАЧАТЬ the sending-off. Bernardo went down a little bit too easily and I am not like the other nineteen managers, who would sit here and give you a load of cock and bull about it.’

      Great. That is what you want to hear when you have sent someone off. How could the fans or the press have a go at me when Pearce had not? That lifted my spirits, and that game at Old Trafford was followed by a run of matches which went well. But then my last two assignments of 2006 brought two more rows.

      Late in the Charlton versus Fulham match, on 27 December, assistant referee Steve Artis flagged for handball by Charlton’s Djimi Traore. I was in no position to see, so I backed my assistant. Fulham equalized from the free-kick. TV replays showed it was not handball and so Charlton, who were battling to avoid relegation, felt robbed. After the game, Charlton manager Alan Pardew complained, ‘In the last few minutes of the match, when my players have forgotten what it’s like to win a game of football, I expect them to be nervous and make silly mistakes. I don’t expect match officials to make similar mistakes.’

      The point, surely, is that officials do make mistakes, exactly like players. It was Artis’s first season but I wrote in my official report that I would be happy for him to run the line in any game I refereed. He had been outstanding until that one, human, error.

      Then, with four days of 2006 remaining, I was fourth official at Vicarage Road for Watford against Wigan. In the second half, with the score at 1–1, torrential rain turned the pitch into a paddy field. Steve Tanner, who was in charge of his second Premier League game, asked my advice but it was still his decision to abandon the game. It was the correct decision, as well. But it was not the weather or even the ref who got the blame. According to the many media reports that highlighted and criticized my involvement, it was me. When I raised a glass on New Year’s Eve, the toast was, ‘Good riddance to 2006.’

      January was like December, with ups and downs. I believe the expression is ‘a rollercoaster of emotions’, but the truth is that, by then, I knew I wanted to get off the ride. That thought became sharper and more definite in January and soon it was an irrevocable decision. There were still plenty of ‘ups’ but they were never sufficient to make me change my mind. The 2006/07 season would be my last.

      On the last day of January, I was appointed to a Chelsea match for the first time since John Terry had made up that story about me. The Premier League had waited and waited, but we all knew that I had to officiate with Chelsea again.

      Terry was injured and not playing. But as I was warming up, he walked past me and made a small gesture of acknowledgement – a slight nod and a partial raising of his open palm. Was it to say, ‘Hello’? Was it to say, ‘Sorry’? Who knows?

      The other Chelsea players started the game by ignoring me completely – not rudely, but just not indulging in any of the usual banter or comments. Then, slowly, things began to get back to normal. At one point, when Ashley Cole was being put on a stretcher, Didier Drogba said to me, ‘Ignore all of them. We know you are a good referee.’

      By ‘all of them’ he could have meant the crowd, who were abusing me, or the media or even the other Chelsea players. I didn’t know what he meant, and it didn’t matter. He was just trying to encourage me. With that, he went to give me a ‘high five’. I responded instinctively and we slapped palms. I dare say I got more criticism for that – for being over-familiar with players and a bit too ‘show biz’, but, for me, it was a lovely moment. There were other good moments too, but by then I knew I was going to finish.

      When I had decided, after Germany, to keep going, it was the right decision but for the wrong reason. I had thought, ‘You could get a Champions League Final, Pollie,’ but that was the wrong type of motivation. You can’t referee just because of the possibility of one match – not least because, as happened in 2005, 2006 and 2007, English teams might reach the Champions League Final which would mean I could not referee it. Carrying on purely for the chance of a Champions League Final was the wrong motivation for another reason as well. It was wrong because the only inducement that really works is that you love it – and I no longer did.

      I was still refereeing well, I believe. Certainly I was still making big calls without worrying about anything other than whether I thought they were right. In February, Tottenham’s Robbie Keane scored twice against Bolton, but then he stopped a shot going into the Spurs goal with his arm. To me, it was a deliberate act. So it was handball. So it was denying the opposing team a goal. So it was a sending-off. Robbie said, ‘On my life, it was an accident,’ but I went with what I believed I had seen. That was the only way I could referee. So when Robbie said, ‘I’ve never been sent off,’ I replied, ‘You have now.’

      An injury prevented my refereeing Liverpool–Manchester United and I was really disappointed – because it would have been my last time in charge of one of English football’s big, set-piece fixtures. Why did I care if I no longer loved refereeing? Well, I suppose that I was noting the milestones as I neared my finish.

      If I had any lingering doubts about finishing – if there were any tiny doubts loitering anywhere in my mind – they were eradicated by another game, another fresh set of accusations and a reporter and a photographer appearing on my doorstep.

      The match, on 9 April, Easter Monday, was Charlton against Reading at The Valley – or relegation-threatened Charlton, as the media felt obliged to call them, at home to the season’s surprise success story.

      In the first half, Charlton’s Alexandre Song Billong committed a bad foul, and so I booked him. At half-time, Alan Pardew, who had been so upset with an assistant referee’s decision the last time I had been to The Valley, came to my changing room. In theory, managers are only allowed in the referee’s room thirty minutes after the finish of the match and, normally, I would have kept him out. But he was in before I realized it was him and, besides, lots of managers make comments at half-time, usually in the tunnel on the way off. Arsène Wenger does it, for instance, and so does José Mourinho. Most of them do. Whether they are just getting something off their chests, or hoping to influence you in the second half, it doesn’t matter. You are not going to be influenced any way.

      Pardew said, ‘All I want to say is be careful with Song. Don’t send him off.’

      I said, ‘Alan, give me some credit,’ by which I meant that I would referee properly. I was not seeking to send off Song, or anyone else.

      He said, ‘Thanks’ and headed off.

      In any game of football, if a player has one yellow card and then commits a foul which is not worth a second caution, you call him to you and make it clear to him – and to everyone in the ground – that it’s ‘one more and you are off’. You pointedly indicate the tunnel, to make it clear, ‘That is where you will be going if you are not careful.’ The reason you do that is to sell your next decision. You are telling him, and telling the crowd, what might happen. Then, if it does happen, everybody accepts it.

      So, in the second half, when Song committed a foul which was not worth a second yellow, I went through that whole warning routine with him. Soon after that, Pardew took Song off and replaced him with a substitute.

      I went home after the game, content with another job well done. But, unbeknown to me, at his press conference, Pardew said, ‘At half-time I went to see Graham Poll and I said “I need to have some signal if he is getting close to being sent off.” He sent me that signal so Alex had to come off. It was full credit to Graham. That’s the sort of refereeing you need.’

      Pardew was trying to praise me. His recollection of our conversation was a little different to mine, but not significantly so. But the media took his comments to mean that he and I had concocted some secret deal. The implication was that I had СКАЧАТЬ