Seeing Red (2 page)

At the start of every season, referees note the fixtures they consider ‘golden games' – the top matches. In the Premier League they are the fixtures between the top four clubs and the derby games with the fiercest rivalries. Tottenham against Chelsea was not quite up there in that top rank, but it was certainly near the top of the next tier. For me, games at Tottenham's White Hart Lane were enjoyable for two reasons. Firstly, they were easy for me geographically – the hotel in which officials gather before the match is a shortish drive from my home – and the second reason I enjoyed games at White Hart Lane was that the club looked after officials and their guests particularly hospitably.

The problem is that referees' guests are seated two rows from the front, in a section next to some of the noisiest, most partisan away supporters. So, although nothing in the buildup led me to think that the game would be in any way out of the ordinary, on that 5 November my wife and children heard a few choice adjectives about me.

Chelsea scored first, after fifteen minutes. Spurs failed to clear a corner and Claude Makelele spanked in a twenty-five-yard, swerving volley. A few moments later, I spotted John Terry pushing and shoving as the ball came over for a corner and so I awarded a free-kick to Spurs. It was a perfectly straightforward decision but, after I had whistled, Didier Drogba headed the ball into the Spurs net. Spurs goalkeeper Paul Robinson had heard my whistle, and made no real attempt to stop the header, but Chelsea supporters thought, briefly, that their team had doubled their lead.

Instead, Tottenham equalized after twenty-four minutes. Jermaine Jenas took a free-kick and Michael Dawson, Tottenham's six foot two inch defender, scored with a glancing header.

The first refereeing flashpoint was at what should have been a routine free-kick, moments before half-time. It was away on Tottenham's right wing and should not have perturbed Chelsea at all, yet Makelele and Ashley Cole would not go back ten yards. When Makelele retreated, Cole edged forward, and vice versa. They both knew I was not going to let them get away with that, so perhaps their pantomime was designed to take the mickey and undermine my authority.

I paced out the distance and called out, ‘Claude, Coley … back you come … just here … please.'

They stayed put. Cole told me to ‘F*** off'.

I did not send him off for that. I know that those who disapprove of all swearing during a match will contend that I should have done; but I did caution both Makelele and Cole. I had done all I could to get them to retreat sensibly.

Aaron Lennon put Spurs ahead seven minutes into the second half. He controlled Robbie Keane's deflected centre
and then placed his careful shot out of the reach of Hilario. After sixty-three minutes, I cautioned Terry when he felled Dimitar Berbatov in full flow. Terry's was the sixth name in my book and had no particular significance to either of us at that moment.

But as my watch ticked off the minutes, Chelsea, whose discipline had been poor all game, began to look spooked by the possibility of defeat. The Press Association reporter at the game wrote, ‘Chelsea had been clearly rattled by Tottenham's fightback.'

Michael Ballack gave me some verbals, and when I cautioned him for dissent, a group of Chelsea players surrounded me. I restored order and dispersed the posse of players but felt it had been a concerted attempt to intimidate me. It was probably instinctive and not deliberate, but I made a mental note that I would have to report it.

Then, at a corner, Terry grappled with Tottenham defender Ledley King. He grabbed King's arm and dragged him to the ground. I realized that I would have to send Terry off if I cautioned him again, but my honest, instinctive opinion was that the incident deserved a booking. If it had been a player who had not been cautioned already, it would not have been an issue, and so fairness required that I took his name, again.

A group of Spurs players, including Pascal Chimbonda, were confronting Terry and, as they did so, the Chelsea player began moving away from the penalty area. But he collided with Hossam Ghaly and I knew that, if I didn't act quickly, there would be a really ugly scene. I called Terry over, showed him the yellow and then the red cards, and he left the field without a mutter of complaint. No other Chelsea players protested about their captain's dismissal
either – although they had complained about nearly every other decision throughout the game.

They found enough to moan about again when I ended the game a little later. As we walked off, Cole swore at me and had a go at my decision making.

I could have sent Cole off for that. I could have red-carded him for using insulting language, or shown him his second yellow for dissent, but I let it go. José Mourinho made a snide remark in the tunnel. Again, I did nothing about it. I was focused on reaching the changing-room.

Perhaps I should have done something about Cole or his manager, but I knew the punishments would be inconsequential. I knew too that referees cannot report every player and every manager who says something out of order – we'd get writer's cramp.

So, if you had asked me at that moment whether I had handled the game well, my honest assessment would have been that I had been a bit lenient afterwards towards Chelsea. But I would also have said that it had been probably the best game of the season so far and that, yes, I had helped facilitate it. I had done my job.

Five minutes after I had reached the officials' changing room, there was a knock on the door. It was John Terry and Gary Staker, Chelsea's player liaison officer and administrative manager. Terry said, ‘I need to know why you sent me off.' In theory, he was not meant to be in my room. Only managers were permitted to go to the referee's room, and then only thirty minutes after the game. The idea is to give people a chance to calm down and to prevent the referee's room being besieged. But I like to sort things out face-to-face and I had got on well enough with Terry for several years. So I said, ‘You had already been cautioned and then, in my view,
you grabbed Ledley King and pulled him to the floor in an aggressive fashion. It wasn't as if you just lent on him – you pulled him down.'

He said, ‘Oh. It wasn't a straight red then.'

‘No, John,' I confirmed. ‘It was a second yellow card.'

The fourth official, Peter Walton, who was also in the room, chipped in, ‘So it means you will only miss one game.'

‘Does it?' said Terry.

‘Yes,' said Walton. ‘It'll be the Carling Cup tie against Aston Villa.'

‘Fine … that's fine then,' said Terry. He left, looking relieved.

I was not sure what that was all about. His initial inquiry – ‘I
need
to know why you sent me off' – was a bit odd. The referee's assessor, Gary Willard, and the match delegate, former West Ham midfielder Geoff Pike, were happy as well. Willard gave me a strong hint that he wanted me to report Chelsea for the incident when I had been surrounded by an angry group of players and both Willard and Pike made comments about Terry looking guilty, rather than surprised, when he was sent off.

I did not have an inkling that a firestorm of controversy was about to erupt. Out of the blue, Chelsea attacked me from three directions. First – and I probably should have seen this one coming – manager José Mourinho purported to be mystified by the disallowed Drogba ‘goal' and by Terry's sending-off. He told reporters, ‘I don't understand why John Terry was sent off. I cannot find a reason for that. The team gave everything and played high-pressure football. We had chances with one player less. But Mr Poll goes home, and nobody can ask him about the reasons behind his decisions. I never ask referees about their decisions because they always
have an excuse. So why should I ask him? He would say something like “Didier Drogba was free and had a clean header but somebody thirty metres away made a foul.” They always have an excuse for their decisions.'

There was some seriously flawed logic there. He seemed to think that I should have allowed Drogba's ‘goal' to stand because Terry's foul was some distance away. That is self-evidently nonsense. On that basis, if someone thumps one of Mourinho's men a long way from the ball, the referee should take no action.

But Ashley Cole, who provided the second prong of the attack on me, made the same daft mistake in his reasoning. He said, ‘Sure, JT got involved with someone on the edge of the box but it was nowhere near the ball.' So what, Ashley? It was a foul. It occurred before Drogba headed the ball. It was not a goal – and it should not have been a controversy.

Cole made a much more damaging allegation about me, however. He said I had told Chelsea, ‘You need to be taught a lesson.' He said that Frank Lampard had told him I had said that. Most newspapers took Cole's word at face value. The implication was that I was deliberately harsh on Chelsea. Some reporters jumped to the conclusion that I was trying to inflict my own punishment on Chelsea for the way they had harangued Italian referee Stefano Farina in the midweek game against Barcelona.

There was only one problem with that theory. I had not said anything about teaching Chelsea a lesson.

I merely said the sort of thing I had said to players for twenty-six years. During the time when Chelsea were haranguing me about the Ballack booking, I said to Lampard, ‘Your team are losing their discipline. You need to get it sorted out or I will have to.' There is a profound difference
between what I said and how Cole reported Lampard's version of what I said. I had urged Lampard to calm down his teammates. I had not implied some sort of vendetta on my part.

But the newspapers had their headlines. Some went with the angle that I had told the England captain to ‘F* * * off'. Some were more excited about my determination to teach Chelsea a lesson. Neither was true.

The third attack on me had not happened yet, but another blow did land and hurt. During the following week the FA told me they were not taking any action against Chelsea for surrounding me and haranguing me because I had not been intimidated. In other words, because I had been strong enough to deal with the incident without looking terrified, Chelsea were going to get away with it.

With that decision, the FA let down every referee in the country – especially the teenagers taking charge of parks matches. The FA signalled to every team in the land that it was perfectly acceptable for an angry mob to surround refs and scream in their faces.

The FA had let me down as well. That season, like never before, I needed their backing. I had made a big mistake at the World Cup and, if I was going to get back my credibility, the FA needed to stop players disputing every decision I made and undermining me by crowding around in a querulous gang.

I asked, in passing, whether Ashley Cole was going to be charged over what he had accused me of saying. The response from the FA astounded me. I was told, ‘We need to investigate the matter thoroughly before making a decision.' So, instead of supporting me, the FA were investigating me. They thought I might actually have said that I wanted to teach Chelsea a lesson. I felt hugely let down.

Then came attack number three from Chelsea. It was launched by Terry himself in an interview with Chelsea's own television channel that was gleefully picked up by all the newspapers. He said, ‘On the pitch Graham Poll said to me that it [the second yellow card] was for the barge on Hossam Ghaly where I just kept running. Then, after the game, he then said to me it was for the fall when me and Ledley King fell. So, you know, he's obviously had a look at it or got people to look at it and decided that's probably the best option for him as it covers every angle for him.'

This time the clear and utterly unfounded allegation was that I had changed my story and had produced a deliberately falsified account. The impression the England captain was trying to create was that he should not have been sent off. There had only been a minor collision and, on thinking about it later, the referee had changed his story to blame a different incident.

If Terry genuinely believed that is what happened he was completely mistaken. I had not changed my story at all. On the field I had not given Terry any explanation about why I was sending him off. That was why he came to ask me about it afterwards in my changing room. The account I gave him in the changing room was the only version of events I described for him. It was the only version there was, because it was the truth.

Perhaps Cole and Terry had simply forgotten that all the match officials were wearing microphones and earpieces throughout the game. Doh! Mine was an ‘open mike'. The two assistants and the fourth official had heard everything I had said. They had not heard me say that Chelsea needed to be taught a lesson. They had not heard me tell Terry to ‘F*** off'. They had not heard me say to Terry on the field why I
was sending him off. They did not hear any of those things because I had not said them.

There were TV cameras as well as the microphone, and so I was able to say, in an email to the FA about Terry's accusation, ‘There were no words exchanged at the time of his dismissal or indeed anything from the moment he fouled his opponent, Mr King, until after the final whistle. The video of the match shows this clearly.'

I sent off my email and waited for the FA to deal with the matter. It was to prove a long and frustrating wait.

I was outraged by the accusations by Cole and Terry, appalled that newspapers took them at face value and devastated that the Football Association investigated me. The biggest hurt was caused by the FA.

In fact, I don't blame Chelsea, their manager or their players for haranguing me on the pitch or the verbal assaults off it. They were encouraged to do and say what they did because, time and time again, they had seen the FA do sweet f.a.

As far as the accusations were concerned, I knew the evidence would exonerate me. I also suspected that the Chelsea players would back down. To persevere with the allegation that I had said they needed to be taught a lesson would have alleged also that both assistant referees and the fourth official were involved in a conspiracy of lies with me.

Yet there was no word from the FA of any charges against Chelsea. The affair was still being investigated. I was still being investigated. They had the reports from four match officials they were supposed to trust. What more did their investigation need? I am not sure I can convey how vulnerable
that made me feel; vulnerable and betrayed. How was I supposed to command the respect of players in other matches if allegations about my integrity were not rebutted? If the FA doubted me, how was I supposed to repair my fractured credibility?

I asked to be taken off the Carling Cup tie between Everton and Arsenal on the Wednesday because I felt so downcast and devalued. Looking back, missing that game would have sent out the wrong message. It would have created the impression that I had been suspended because of the Chelsea accusations. So it was perhaps fortunate that I was told that I had to go ahead and referee the fixture at Everton. I would have to tough it out. Perhaps it would be a nice, incident-free match. Not a chance.

In the twentieth minute Everton appealed for a penalty when Andy Johnson was tackled. It looked like a fair challenge to me, so I span away from the incident to follow play. I was aware that James McFadden was chasing after me but I was concentrating on the game. Then, as clear as anything, I heard McFadden shout, ‘You f***ing cheat!'

His team-mate, Tim Cahill, was near me and grabbed my arm. He said, ‘Don't do it, Pollie.' Cahill knew, McFadden knew and I knew what the Scot had said.

Whatever nonsense people say about me seeking controversy, I ask you to believe that the last thing I needed that night was more back page headlines. But McFadden had run thirty or forty yards to call me a cheat. It was not a spontaneous, heat-of-the-moment remark. Other players had heard it.

Referees hate being called a cheat. The whole foundation of refereeing is that you make honest decisions. You want to get those decisions right – you strive to get them right – but if there are mistakes, they are honest mistakes. I would have betrayed
my profession if I had not sent off McFadden. So I did.

The ground erupted. It had to be a home player, didn't it? And Everton manager David Moyes proved a major disappointment. Before the match, during my warm-up, he came over and said, ‘Don't let them get to you, Graham. We all know you are the best referee.' Yet after the match he staged a theatrical stunt at the media conference. He produced McFadden, who denied that he had called me a cheat. Everton's case was that the player had said ‘f***ing shite' rather than ‘f***ing cheat'. So that was all right then! But I know what he said.

Moyes told the assembled media, ‘Once again we have a situation where Graham Poll says a player says one thing and the player says he said something different. Who do you believe?' That ‘once again' comment was a reference to the Chelsea accusations.

After reviewing the match report – which included the explanation that McFadden had been dismissed for calling me a cheat – Everton decided not to appeal against the decision. So I was once again exonerated.

The assessor, Mike Reed, thought I'd had a ‘brilliant' game. But, when I got back to my hotel, a group of Everton fans did not share that view. By then they had probably heard the Everton version of McFadden's abuse, so they spat out some expletives of their own at me.

Next morning, when I turned on my mobile, there was a text message and a voicemail from Keith Hackett, manager of the referees' Select Group. He was in Switzerland at a UEFA meeting. He had instructed me to call him urgently ‘about a financial irregularity regarding car sponsorship'.

A what? I could not believe it. I phoned UEFA and demanded that they dragged Keith out of his meeting. With
mounting paranoia, I shouted at my boss. I yelled, ‘What the hell is going on, Keith? Is this being pushed out by a club? Where is all this coming from?' He asked me if I had a sponsored car. I said, ‘Why do you need to ask that? I have my own car and my bank statement can show that I pay for that car every month.'

He said, ‘The Premier League press office have been phoned by a paper. The paper say they have a copy of an agreement showing that you have a sponsored car …'

I replied, ‘Point one: I don't have a sponsored car. Point two: is it wrong if I did? Dermot Gallagher has one with the sponsor's name across the side. Keith, somebody is trying to do me, turn me over.'

My boss went back to his meeting and I made a mental tally of recent events. I had been maligned by two Chelsea players, one of whom was the England captain. I had sent off an Everton player for questioning my integrity. His manager had questioned my veracity. I had been abused by supporters. I had been accused of some sort of financial impropriety. Oh, and I had been betrayed by the Football Association. All in just under four days.

At breakfast I read a report of the Everton game in
The
Guardian
. The writer said that if I was offended by being called a cheat, I needed to get out more. I did not read any other reports but I now know they were scathing. The Mirror's headline was ‘POLL POTTY' and, in a later edition of
The Guardian
, Dominic Fifield came to this considered appraisal of me:

Other reports pointed out that I was already in the spotlight over my ‘much-criticized decision' to dismiss John Terry. Some reminded readers that Terry said he had been given two different versions of why he was shown a second yellow card and that team-mate Ashley Cole accused me of bias against his club. Very few reports bothered to add that I had denied the claims of Terry and Cole.

In the car on the way home, I turned on the radio – to hear a phone-in caller repeat the comment that I had indulged in an autograph-signing session before the previous night's game. The caller said, ‘He's Mr Big Time Charlie, Mr Superstar who loves the attention.'

The truth, if anyone is bothered about the truth, is that before the game and before the ground was open to the public, there were three or four lads by one of the dug-outs who were with one of the club officials. They asked for my autograph. I obliged. If I had not, then presumably I would have been a Big Time Charlie who thinks he is too important to bother with kids who want his autograph.

On the way home, as I drove off the M6 toll road and pulled onto the M42, I looked at my eyes in the rear-view mirror because I knew they were brimming up with tears. Alone with my feelings, my emotions had spilled over.

In any other period of my refereeing career, I would have been angered by the accusations and understandably upset
by the crescendo of criticism, but I cannot imagine they would have made me tearful. Now, however, five rough days had brought confirmation of a truth I had been avoiding: I had fallen out of love with refereeing. Not football – I still loved football – but I no longer loved refereeing. That realization brought a dead weight of sadness.

Refereeing had been so important to me for half my life, but I had refereed the Everton game really well and yet still had my competence and integrity doubted. It was clear to me that my credibility was gone forever. The disillusionment and deep, deep disappointment I felt as I drove home from the city of Liverpool was intense and oppressive.

Earlier that week, on the morning of the Spurs–Chelsea game, Patrick Barclay had written a short little tribute to me as a ‘PS' at the bottom of his column in the
Sunday Telegraph
. The brief article finished with two points which meant the world to me. I am not sure journalists realize how their words can hurt or heal. But, after referring to my three-card trick at the World Cup, Paddy wrote:

I have chosen to reprint the piece of flattery from the
Sunday
Telegraph
because of the contrast between the kind picture it paints of me and the state I was in a few days later, on that journey home from Liverpool. If Patrick Barclay had seen me
close to tears in my car, he might have had less praise for my strength of character; or, I suppose, he might have understood how difficult season 2006/07 really was.

Soon after I reached my home, a woman reporter from
The Times
arrived at my door to ask some questions. I had given one interview, to Sky TV, in Germany after my Stuttgart misadventure and had taken a vow of silence since. So I asked
The Times
woman to leave. Unable to write anything much about me, she wrote some spiteful things about Tring. I was upset about that, because the people of the town had been very supportive.

It had not been a very good week so far. The next morning, Friday, a letter arrived, addressed on the envelope to ‘G Poll, Tring'. That was all. My instinct told me it would be abuse from a Chelsea supporter or a very quick Everton fan. I told myself not to open it, but I did. It was from a lad named Thomas from an address in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. It said:

Interestingly, even this young man assumed I had told Chelsea they needed to be taught a lesson. But his letter reminded me that I owed a responsibility to all the referees in the entire football pyramid. My responsibility to them was not to be broken or cowed by false allegations. Thomas cannot have known the positive effect his letter had on me. I wrote back to him, enclosing some refereeing ‘goodies'.

A little later that day, I headed back to the North-West to stay overnight ahead of my Saturday fixture: Manchester City versus Newcastle. The match was going to be live on Sky at lunchtime and they were billing it as, ‘Graham Poll's next game'.

Somewhere between Stoke and Manchester, as I sat in the stationary queue of traffic which seems mandatory on the M6, I was telephoned by Brian Barwick, the chief executive of the Football Association. He wanted to draw my attention to some mildly supportive comment pieces in some newspapers. He said, ‘I hear you have been thinking about possibly giving up. Well, I hope you have been reading the more positive press coverage today.'

All my anger and frustration at his organization exploded. I told him how disappointed I was that Chelsea had not been charged with intimidation – a signal that it was all right to mob referees. I was doubly disappointed that nobody at Chelsea had been charged with anything for making allegations about my integrity. And I told him it was an absolute disgrace that the FA themselves had decided to investigate me and then had let that investigation drag on.

I said, ‘It is because the FA is not strong with people who say things about referees, and do these things to referees, that James McFadden believes it is OK to call me a cheat.

‘You, the FA, should have backed me straight away after the Tottenham v Chelsea game, or conducted a very quick
inquiry. Then you, as chief executive of the Football Association, should have held a press conference saying it is wrong to question the integrity of referees.

‘You should have done that – not for me, but for every referee in the country. But you didn't and so there will be 27,000 referees going out this weekend knowing that they cannot rely on the support of the Football Association. When a referee takes firm and correct action you don't support him.'

Barwick huffed and puffed but didn't know what to say. My final comment to him was a question. I asked, ‘How on earth do you expect me to go out and referee a football match tomorrow?'

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, also telephoned me and I asked him the same question. Scudamore said, ‘You will go out tomorrow and referee brilliantly as you always do.'

I responded, ‘And you take that for granted. You think that just happens. You have no idea how difficult that is – not just for me but all referees, given the scrutiny we are under. This is the hardest it has ever been to referee well in the Premiership. It won't get easier and it is not pleasant any more.'