You are the ref: what next?

I have always had very strict principles when coaching my players about how they 'communicate' with the referee. This is someone who is giving up their time in order to help them have an organised game of football. Dissent will not be tolerated. 

Although it is slightly different in the professional game, as the art of refereeing becomes professionalised too, I still believe in similar principles. Even if you feel a referee performs, in your view, 'badly' they should not be used as a scapegoat for your team's failure to win a football match. 

If you google 'Mourinho referee' there are
loads of pictures  just like this one.

These are people who in comparison to the players and even managers, make far fewer mistakes. The issue they have, not too different to the role of the goalkeeper within a football team, is that if they make a key mistake it is magnified.

The referee's performance provides an easy excuse for under pressure managers (looking at you, Jose) or a way to deflect from a poor team performance (and again, Jose). 

Being a Wolves fan, much has been made of the standard of officiating in the Championship and it was difficult not to be bemused at the events that occurred this week in the Newcastle -Burton game

Keith Stroud's decision to give a free kick for encroachment at a penalty was one of the strangest decisions I have seen for a good while. Understandably, due to the pressures that come at this level; fans, players and managers were in uproar. 

The easy and standard thing to do here is to make a generalisation about how poor referees in the football league are, and that we have a problem with their knowledge of the game. However, I see more of a cultural issue that is deeper rooted. 

Retrospective punishment provides a simple example of this. When a referee does not spot something contentious in the game, it can go one of two ways. If he admits he did not see it and that is why he did not take action, retrospective punishment can be enforced. That is fine. But when the referee claims he did see it the powers above will do nothing. In principle, I can understand this, they don't want to over-rule the official or look as if they are throwing them under the bus. 

What I feel this does however, is make the situation worse. What they are allowing the referees to do is not admit to mistakes. Having recently read Matthew Syed's Blackbox Thinking (highly recommended) this is an example of a 'closed loop'. This is a fixed mentality where failure does not lead to progress. If the referees feel as if they can not admit to mistakes (usually as they know they will be given a weekend off or be demoted to a lower division) then progress will be stunted. 

We may not be seeing Mr. Stroud for a few weeks

If mistakes are not identified as learning opportunities, how can we expect the standards of refereeing to improve? This is a key issue that I feel that the PGMOL (Professional Game Match Official's Limited) and the Football Association have. Within their inner circles, it may well be that referees have mentors that help them following mistakes, but the way it is dealt with publicly does not give this image at all.  

The scenes from the game also do not point to this type of environment. If there was an acceptance of mistakes, surely his assistants or the fourth official would have interjected and the farce that ensued would have been stopped in its tracks? It is likely that they were too worried to undermine the man in the middle. 

When I first saw that Howard Webb was a part of the BT Sports team of pundits, providing an insight on referees during the game, I wasn't sure if I liked it. As mentioned earlier, it might seem as if he is throwing his former peers under the bus. In the long run, it could help. He is not lambasting referees for making mistakes, just making observations on what decision they could have alternatively done.

Hopefully organisations can follow suit and we will see more progress. Otherwise, we will continue to see the same mistakes made over and over again. And isn't that what Einstein said was a sign of insanity?