30Jan

Albion beneficiaries of refereeing inconsistency

by Jason H

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What a weekend. Victory over Premier League Newcastle and drawn at Anfield in the next round, it’s been a superb few days for Brighton. With Wolves’ Sam Vokes joining on loan for the rest of the season, we’re unbeaten in 2012, going well again and set up nicely for the biggest of the big ones, an away day much bigger than Anfield or anywhere else, at Selhurst on Tuesday.

One of the main talking points from the game was Newcastle’s grievance over a penalty they should have been awarded for handball against Ashley Barnes in the second half. Sliding across to block a shot, with his arms raised, the ball struck an arm at high speed. Up went all the Newcastle fans behind the goal. The referee, with a clear view of it, was unmoved. Play on, and 1-0 it finished. I’m hardly going to complain about the decision, given that it went in our favour, but it again raises an issue which has been high on managers’ agendas this week: refereeing consistency.

I don’t know if referees themselves look at media discussion of the latest controversies and are therefore aware of what’s been going on, so have no idea if he’ll even have seen the penalty given to Liverpool for a very similar incident in the League Cup semi-final with Manchester City during the week. If anything, Barnes’ handball was more clear-cut, because the ball did not first hit him on the leg before rearing up onto his arm, as it had with Micah Richards at Anfield. Yet one was given, the other not. This is the sort of thing which makes managers so angry in post-match interviews, when they have seen and do know what else has been going on, and seek only the consistent application of the laws. What possible reason can there be, Alan Pardew must be thinking, for the difference in the decisions between those two incidents?

Unlike managers, though, the referees never face the cameras after the game, never have to explain what’s happened. Very rarely, a referee does so voluntarily, and we at least get to hear their interpretation of what they saw, or think they saw. But most of the time it’s a wall of silence, leaving managers with no idea why they’ve been on the receiving end of a different decision this time round, and very little leeway to complain about it afterwards without getting hauled before the FA. This huge imbalance is something that needs to be addressed if managers are not eventually to just give up making any kind of post-match comment for fear of the consequences.

Given Pardew’s comments about Reading and Brighton during his tenure at the Madejski, particularly during our League One title-winning campaign of 2001-2, not many Brighton fans will feel too sorry for him. But had it gone the other way, and we’d been denied a potential trip to Anfield by a refereeing call, we’d feel rather differently to the euphoria of Saturday evening and the subsequent draw, so it’s easy to see why managers get so exasperated with the officiating from time to time. At least our livelihoods don’t depend on it.

Posted by Brighton fan Jason Heaver