CHUFFED and GUTTED

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Guardian - January 17, 2006
Whistle while you work Rob Smyth blows the whistle on a repellent combination of incompetence and self-importance that has seen refereeing standards plummet this season.

"... . Referees should be stagehands, nothing more, yet this season they have taken over from the dramatis personae far too often with their repellent combination of incompetence and self-importance. Most football fans perceive them as humourless inadequates with a face for radio and a personality for solitude, yet these people are given free rein to have their 90 minutes of fame every week. Since referees turned professional they have become more visible in every sense; as exposure has risen, so standards have plummeted.
It is dangerous to embrace the nostalgic assumption that refereeing was better in the seventies and eighties,..But there is little question that this season represents a nadir of refereeing in the modern era.
In the past month alone there have been all manner of diabolical decisions..... Referees are supposed to be accountable for all this, yet all we get are the same smug faces making the same smug mistakes.
In a sense such blunders are inevitable, because it is an exceedingly difficult job, but nobody makes them with quite such self-satisfied, schoolmasterly odiousness as the current crop....
The dictatorial, Zorro-ish swishing of cards; the theatrical backing away 10 yards so that an errant player has to come to them; the demented charge towards any flashpoint, like they would actually do something if it really kicked off; the relentlessly po-faced expressions. When you put it all together there's the model of a charmless man.
Ironic, then, that refereeing incompetence is often excused on exactly the grounds that it is part of the game's charm. In reality, it has all the tolerable charm of a rectal catheter. Supporters are sick of going home feeling the ref has done a number on them yet again. This incompetence will not stand. Too often decisions are made upon human impulses such as fear - how often do referees go for their top pocket only to realise they've already booked the player and then bottle it? - or spite . If it means trialing video evidence so that the casting judgment rests with someone detached in a soundproof box, so be it.
Either way, the cult of refereeing celebrity has to stop. With the exception of putting Tring on the map (Graham Poll comes from there, you know) it serves no purpose. .....Or the FA could just ban all publicity, and stop legitimising a culture whereby the referee is fast becoming the single-most important influence on a football match. It won't stop the mistakes entirely, but it will stop them being quite so irritating.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1687671,00.html