麻豆社

The men in black

• Peter van Dyk
• 4 Jul 06, 10:55 AM

Due to popular demand we talked about refereeing today and the text messages and phone calls flooded in to the programme, which played host to former English premiership referee Jeff Winter. We were also joined in the studio by another Yaw, not the Yaw who came to see us on Monday, but another Ghanaian, Yaw Adu-Larbi. By the way, this is Martin Vennard writing again and not Peter van Dyk, who is working on another project..

Jeff Winter said the refereeing in the early stages of the tournament was very good, but the players' behaviour, and not the referees, has been getting worse.
But Mick in Australia said the referee had been terrible in his adopted country's games and video technology would have changed the names of the teams in the semi-finals.
While Theo in Athens believes that while the referees did well at the start of the tournament, they've been losing control.
Yaw said the decisions suggest the referees aren't allowing the game to flow.
Jeff said that as a referee he just took any big match as a game of football and that he would not discuss controversial decisions with the teams straight after matches as emotions are running too high.
He said fans get swayed by their emotions and don't see things clearly.
Mick said the last-minute penalty in the Australia-Italy match should never have been given, but Jeff said that even if the Australian defender had shown no intent he had still impeded the progress of the Italian striker and that that was a penalty according to the rules of the game.
Zeljko in Croatia said the fans there had been more annoyed by their team's performance against Australia than by the mistakes by referee Graham Poll, who gave three yellow cards to a Croat player before finally sending him off.
Portugal fan Alfredo stood up for the refs, who don't have the benefit of seeing incidents from several angles, while Rob in Holland said the Russian referee Valentine Ivanov lost the plot while refereeing Holland against Portugal. Tusang in Zimbabwe also defended the refs.

Here are some texts we got:

Biran Saine:

I think the game of football is becoming more difficult for referees to umpire so I'll recommend that referees should view a video play back of critical scenes before taking a decision.

From Australia:

I hope Australia and Ghana make it back to the World Cup next time to show the referees, Fifa and the world what they are missing in total football.

David Marshland:

Ghana were treated very badly by the officials in their game against Brazil. Makes me wonder if there is one law for the europeans and south americans and a harsher one for the rest.