The referee’s organising body has denied claims by Mark Halsey they have put pressure on refs to claim they had not seen controversial match incidents.
ClaretandHugh covered Halsey’s comments yesterday after they had appeared in the national press and followed closely on the Sergio Aguero/Wimston Reid elbowing affair.
The organising body for elite referees in England, the PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited), has denied outright that it has every pressured officials into saying they hadn’t seen match incidents.
Halsey claimed that he was told by the refereeing body to say he had not seen incidents in matches when decisions had gone to appeal.
The 55-year-old, who retired at the end of the 2012-13 season, made the comments in a debate over Aguero’s appeal against a three-match ban.
But the PGMOL told MirrorFootball in a statement: “Match officials submit their reports, including critical incidents, directly to the FA.
Match officials ensure that their reports are a full and accurate description of the incident. There is no pressure from the PGMO to include or omit anything.”
I still think this story is ridiculous – has Halsey got a book to sell or something?
He obviously likes the limelight and coming out with controversial things like this will guarantee him the column inches he apparently so desires.
….but having said that, this rule about if a Ref has seen an incident and doesn’t give a foul then the incident can’t reviewed by the Authorities is balmy.
Ref’s are human and make mistakes – if Marriner saw the Aguero elbow and didn’t think it was a foul then he needs to go to Specsavers and get his bumps felt – what’s wrong is if he in his Report had said he’d seen the incident then the incident could not be reviewed – that’s just stupid!
PGMOL were always going to say they have never pressured officials, I think if you did a straw poll among the majority of clubs outside the top 4 most would believe Halsey, the PGMOL have forced ref’s to work in lower divisions after matches when their performance has been deemed substandard, the fact no referees have come out to defend PGMOL yet is for me very interesting, if what Halsey has said is true it would be good if other former ref’s could verify his claims then the pathway could be opened to fix the problems of refereeing for all clubs at all levels. No one expects ref’s to be perfect, they are human and they need help within the game and imo the fans of most teams want the right decisions to be made correctly, if a goal is offside it shouldn’t count, when penalties are awarded incorrectly they should overturned, when players cheat they should be booked or sent off, with video evidence most of all decisions can be resolved in seconds, the game clocks can be stopped where necessary to review the video.