Seeing Red (10 page)

I was promoted from Class III to Class II at the earliest opportunity and upwards to Class I – again, at the first possible opportunity. There were some who said, ‘He's a bit young.' When I was immediately promoted to be a linesman in the Isthmian League, the secretary of that competition, Ray Parker, said, ‘Oh, you are the cocky one from Hertfordshire.' I replied, ‘Yeah, and I'll be a ref in your league next year.' ‘I don't think so,' he retorted. But I was.

I did ‘talk the talk' but I did deliver as well. I kept getting good marks and there were plenty who took an interest, helped and encouraged me, despite my cheeky bluster. In November 1984, for instance, by which time I was a Class I ref, but still aged just twenty-one, I was the referee at an FA Vase match. My records tell me it was in Luton and that it was between 61 FC and Woodford Town. Years later I
learned that Reg Payne, the Football Association's top man as far as refereeing was concerned, bought a ticket to stand on the terraces. He had heard about G Poll, a promising youngster from Hertfordshire. He did not want to declare his presence but he wanted to have a look at me. It was at the end of that season that I was promoted to become an Isthmian League referee (much to Ray Parker's surprise). I think I was probably the youngest Isthmian League ref ever.

The Isthmian League is, at the time of writing, more properly known as the Rymans Isthmian League and its premier division is in the seventh tier of English football's pyramid. It is a famous, proud old league, which was formed in 1905 and is home to some of the best known and best loved smaller clubs in and around London.

If I get no other message across at all from this book, I want to tell people that the ten years I spent on the Isthmian League list were bliss. Since then I have been to two World Cups and refereed some of the most skilled practitioners of the art of football – geniuses and giants of the world game – but the truth is that my days in the Isthmian League were probably the most enjoyable.

When people ask why on earth anyone would want to referee, I wish I could transport them to that time in my life and show them. It was a good standard of football, in decent little stadiums with floodlights, with well-cared-for playing surfaces, and stands and boardrooms peopled by folk who loved the game. I was a kid in his twenties, but doing really well and loving it. The matches were not that difficult. The odd fixture would rear up at you and pose a few problems, but mostly they went well.

I started with Hertfordshire towns along the A41 – literally towns. There was Hemel Hempstead Town, Berkhamsted
Town and Tring Town. Occasionally I strayed off the A41 into Bedfordshire and took a game at Barton Rovers. Those teams were in what was then called Division Two North but I was quickly promoted to the Premier Division, which had teams from further afield – famous clubs such as Carshalton, Kingstonian and Sutton United.

By now, I was working as a salesman and had all the patter, which I used to good effect in the boardrooms and clubhouses after the matches, when I got to know all the players and club officials. Ray Parker once told me that the marks a referee is given by the clubs can only go down in the clubhouse, never up. In other words, if you have been given a seven, your behaviour and demeanor afterwards might get you knocked down to a six. It will never get your mark increased to an eight. Nevertheless, there were plenty of refs on the Isthmian League circuit who tried to talk their way to higher marks by being especially nice to chairmen. We used to have a Mars bar before games to give us energy and the joke was that some refs saved theirs to have after the game but before they went into the boardroom – because they put more energy into flattery than football.

Anyway, I went into the Isthmian League a boy and came out a man. I had a decade of rewarding games. There were some younger players who later scaled football's heights and there were some veterans on their way down from those heights. I made myself known to one of each. I sent off a Hayes youngster called Les Ferdinand, who went on to play for QPR, Newcastle, Spurs, West Ham, Bolton, Reading and England; and I booked former Scotland striker Andy Gray, who, after a barnstorming career with Dundee, Aston Villa, Wolves, Everton, West Brom and Glasgow Rangers, spent one season at Cheltenham Town, where he was refereed by
me in an FA Trophy tie. The eloquence with which Andy expressed dissent to me that day has since served him well on Sky TV – and he is still complaining about referees.

The level at which Les and Andy were playing when I showed them cards was certainly competitive, but there was not a win-at-all costs mentality. The remnants of football's Corinthian spirit survived in competitions such as the Isthmian League – and so did the opportunity to referee with some degree of flexibility. For instance, on one occasion at Saffron Walden Town, a player came out with England's most common expletive. Very loudly and very close to the main stand, he shouted, ‘F*** off!' The crowd expected me to do something, wanted me to do something, but I instinctively felt that nobody wanted him sent off for a temporary lapse of control. If he had kicked someone up in the air then I would have sent him off, but he had not hurt anybody. So I gave an extravagant ‘Peeeep!' on my whistle and made a big show of lecturing him sternly, but did not caution him or send him off. Then I restarted play with a free-kick to the other side.

There is no provision at all in the Laws of Football for what I did. In fact, it is completely wrong to give a free-kick for swearing unless you have shown a card. The Law gives no leeway and so a lot of refs would either have gone, ‘Red card!' or have done nothing at all. I showed suitable disapproval but did not send him off. The crowd was satisfied and I think the spirit of football was honoured as well.

There are parallels with an infamous incident, decades later, involving Wayne Rooney. In February 2005, by which time I was older than the players instead of younger, I took charge of an Arsenal–Manchester United confrontation at Highbury. We shall get to the events of that game later – the
altercation in the tunnel, how I tried to get Roy Keane to smile and how I managed to keep the lid on a tinder box of a game – but let's deal with Wayne's words now.

I can't remember precisely what caused the Rooney outburst. The ball was played through to him but I had to blow my whistle, either for offside or handball. The words he used were what some call industrial language. They had Anglo-Saxon roots. They were repetitive. Someone worked out that he used the f-word twenty-seven times, mostly at me. It was, apparently, an impressive demonstration of rapid-fire swearing. I say ‘apparently' because, in the heat of the battle, I did not hear everything. And even if I had, in the circumstances, I would not have considered the Rooney rant worth a red card.

Despite what so-called experts keep writing and broadcasting, using ‘foul language' is no longer an offence. That is because, rightly or wrongly, people swear all the time. So the football Law now bans ‘offensive or abusive or insulting language or gestures'. It is up to the referee to judge whether the words or actions are offensive, abusive or insulting. So, a player can say, ‘Oh, f*** off' as a way of letting off steam and mean no harm, or he can say something apparently innocuous but with venom and intend it to be abusive. The referee decides.

In Rooney's case, there were also other considerations. If I had sent him off, a volatile game might well have exploded. So, I called Roy Keane, Rooney's captain, over to us as a witness and told Rooney, ‘There will be no more of this. Or else you will be sent off.' Whether Roy or his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, reinforced my message at half-time, I do not know, but Rooney gave me no more trouble and kept his mouth more or less under control.
From my point of view, I had successfully man-managed him and had helped the game. Others saw things differently. The English Schools FA said that Rooney had set an atrocious example and many queued up to condemn him – and me for not punishing him. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, said the United player needed a clip around the ear – although, wisely, Sepp has never tried administering it himself.

Things were more straightforward in the Isthmian League and I remained a referee in that competition for two seasons (1991/92 and 1992/93) after I had won a place on the Football League referee's list. When the time came for me to finish on the Isthmian League, they invited me to take charge of their Charity Shield match, their only major set-piece match I had not refereed. I accepted the invitation gratefully. Happy days.

When I reached the Football League, initially as a linesman, I was not sure I wanted the responsibility involved. Refereeing in the Isthmian League was far more enjoyable and far less stressful. The idea that a decision I made in the Football League would affect a result on the Pools Coupons, and so could stop someone winning a fortune, was playing on my mind.

The first rung on the ladder had been parks football, which was just for fun, really. Then came the Isthmian League, which was definitely still fun but more serious. Ascending to the third rung, and becoming a Football League linesman, involved a much greater change in terms of the calibre of matches in which I was involved. That started to faze me. It was a big step up and I thought I should give up being a linesman, give up the promotion to the Football League and just referee in the Isthmian, which I enjoyed.

I spoke candidly with my dad, who persuaded me to give it another six months before making a decision. So I did, and of course the six months turned into a long career.

I was still a wise-cracking smart alec. In my second season as a Football League linesman, I ran the line for Brian Hill, a top ref who was held in awe by his fellow officials. I put the mud from my boots in his shoes, as you do. Well, you do if you are a young buck having a laugh.

Philip Don – who refereed in the 1994 World Cup and was my first boss when referees turned professional – had the misfortune to be the ref once with me as one of his linesmen. Before the game I hid his shorts. I only gave them back at the last minute. Laugh? I don't think he did.

Nor did anyone else. My jolly japes became just too much.

The League received more complaints about me than anyone else, ever. After my first thirty games, fourteen referees had complained about my general attitude. And don't assume that I behaved sensibly in the other sixteen games. In those matches it was often a ref who had already reported me and who was too weary of my misbehaviour to complain again. I don't think there were any who happily tolerated finding mud in their shoes or ‘losing' their shorts.

One assessor reported that I ran the line at Northampton ‘in an unorthodox manner'. What happened was that it was a freezing, filthy night. I was at the end where nothing was happening. I was just standing near the halfway line, trying in vain to keep warm. I was hopping from one foot to another, and I suppose my movements looked a little like a Highland reel, so a few fans started loudly humming the first few bars of ‘Scotland the Brave'. I played up to them by kicking one leg behind the other in a pretty poor imitation of a Scottish dance. I should not have done it because the spectators were
not there to see me. I was not supposed to be a performer. The assessor mentioned my act in his report, and not in a good way.

The Football League referees' secretary, John Goggins, wrote asking me for my observations. My view was that if I wrote in response, I would have to admit what I had done. So, on one of my trips as a sales representative, I stopped off at a motorway service area and made a call from a payphone. In fact, I had to make a couple of stops and a couple of calls before getting Mr Goggins, as he was known to me.

Nervously, I said, ‘What I can tell you is that you will never ever get a complaint like this about me again.'

Mr Goggins said, ‘So you are not admitting it, merely promising it will not happen again.'

I said, ‘I am promising it will not happen again.'

And he said, ‘Make sure it doesn't.'

John Goggins did something else, something very shrewd, to straighten me out. For the last game of the season he sent me to Swindon to run the line for Neil Midgley, one of the most respected referees in the game. John Goggins gave Neil Midgley a message from the Football League to deliver to the young linesman whose antics were unacceptable. They sent Neil because he was a natural referee, the sort I aspired to be. He was certainly capable of enjoying a laugh at the right time, but he took his craft seriously.

If John Goggins had sent some straight-laced, authoritarian figure, I might not have listened. But I certainly took notice when Neil said, ‘Take this as a compliment because if they didn't think you had a good future we wouldn't be having this conversation.' Then he added, ‘The Football League said you must shut up or get out.'

At Football League matches, there was so much riding on my decisions as a linesman that the League wanted me to concentrate on raising my flag at the correct moment. They did not want me thinking about hiding someone's shorts. So I turned over a new leaf and quit the mucking about. But I went from one extreme to another. From being a noisy nuisance, I now kept as quiet as I could.

The new, silent Graham Poll sat in the corner of the dressing room for the first game of the 1988/89 season at Leyton Orient with my head in the
Daily Telegraph
, the largest paper I could find. Keith Cooper, the referee, asked me what was wrong. ‘Nothing,' I replied keeping my words to a minimum. Keith wanted to be able to communicate with me and so made his point forcefully. ‘Put that paper down or I'll rip it out of your hands,' he said. Clearly, I needed to find a happier medium for my behaviour. And so, since then, I have aimed to position myself somewhere appropriate on the scale between mad man and sad man.

As well as running the line in the Football League, I was refereeing in the tier below, the Conference. I did two seasons as a Conference ref and then, in the summer of 1990, expected to get an interview to become a Football League referee. I had the highest marks in the Conference.