Football

[Harvester]

Who was actually credited with the ‘goal’? It must have been a bit of an embarrassment to him when his name ended on the scoresheet!

 

[Haywain]

Who was actually credited with the ‘goal’? It must have been a bit of an embarrassment to him when his name ended on the scoresheet!

It was recorded as an own goal.

 

[Tetchytyke]

So that one thing 18 years ago should be held against him for evermore?

Yes. It was such an awful mistake he should never have been allowed to referee a football match again, not even in the pub league.

Trouble is, it’s not like his decision making has got any better in the years since.

 

[Haywain]

Yes. It was such an awful mistake he should never have been allowed to referee a football match again, not even in the pub league.

I guess you have never made a mistake in life.

 

[REVUpminster]

I watch Torquay and the worse the team plays it's all the refs fault and it gets really vitriolic.

 

[D1511]

I guess you have never made a mistake in life.

Stuart Atwell's charge sheet is a very long one, as any Google search will demonstrate.

He is an atrociously poor referee who shows no capacity for improvement, so @Tetchytyke is perfectly correct in saying he should not be refereeing at a professional level.

Of course people make errors, but there are professions where the avoidance of frequent mistakes is a requirement. Being a professional referee is one of those, and Atwell doesn't meet that criteria.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I guess you have never made a mistake in life.

Some professional mistakes are so bad that they mean you should never be allowed to work again in that field. I don't see why that's controversial, doctors or lawyers who make serious errors will be struck off. If I dropped a clanger of that size at work I'd be expecting a meeting without tea and biscuits and I'd be expecting to get my P45.

I'd probably not be quite so firm in my opinion if it was the only mistake Attwell had ever made, but it isn't. He has never shown any ability to get any better. He's still making amateur errors pretty much every week.

Speaking of amateur errors, what happened at Old Trafford yesterday blew any of Arteta's complaints out of the water. The red card was an absolutely disgraceful decision and the decision to allow Man City's winner to stand was somehow even worse than that. I strongly dislike both Manchester clubs, they're both cheats, so have no skin in that game. But these are professional referees earning six-figure salaries, why are they seemingly so incapable of getting even the most basic decisions correct?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 08:25 ==

I watch Torquay and the worse the team plays it's all the refs fault and it gets really vitriolic.

League Two footballers make lots of mistakes so it is unfair to expect League Two referees to not make mistakes. But the refereeing standards in the lower leagues are absolutely horrific, I'm a Bradford fan and half the decisions in matches seem to be made by a random number generator.

I'm actually of the opinion that a decent minority of referees are actually corrupt. With all the money sloshing around the game, not to mention the south-east Asian betting companies all run by organised crime groups, I think it is a given that some of that cash ends up with referees. I think it would be naive to think it doesn't and I think the lower leagues are more attractive to those who wish to fix matches.