Seeing Red (28 page)

Later, to distract myself, I turned on my mobile. There was a text message from my daughter, Gemma. It said, ‘HI DAD. JUST A QUICK TXT 2 LET U KNOW I'M THINKIN OF U AND HOPE U WERE RIGHT LIKE U NORMALLY R. LOVE U LOADS AND LOADS WHATEVER HAPPENS. X GEMMA X'. I still have that message. I have changed my mobile telephone more than once but always saved Gemma's message of unquestioned support and love.

The first person to get through on my mobile that morning in Stuttgart was Colin Paterson from BBC radio. He wondered if I would do an interview. I think I was rude to him as well. I listened to a voicemail from Rob Styles, who begged me not to make any hasty judgement about giving
up. It was a kind, supportive message, and made me think for the first time that perhaps the decision about whether I would continue would be mine to make. I rang Rob back and said that, at the moment, my decision would be not to make a decision. That was my first meagre moment of positivity.

I had been mauled after the 2002 World Cup in Japan – the South American contingent of FIFA had ripped me apart – and so I expected a similarly brutal treatment by everybody in 2006. I was filled with paranoia and, in the morning, thought everyone was looking at me and sniggering. That Friday morning, in the hotel in Stuttgart, I sent text messages to Neale Barry, head of refereeing at the FA, and Keith Hackett. I wrote a letter to José Maria Garcia Aranda, FIFA's head of refereeing. In the texts and the letter I apologized for bringing shame to the recipients.

The train journey back to Frankfurt was mostly silent, although inside my mind there was turmoil, and back at the referees' base I kept my head down, avoided eye contact and made straight for my room. I had not eaten since the game, but could not contemplate food and did not want to see anyone at lunch.

There was a knock on the door. It was José Maria and his assistant. They both hugged me and, in a phrase which I shall remember for ever, José Maria, who had every reason to believe I had let him down, said, ‘We are not disappointed in you. We are disappointed for you.'

As we were talking, another well-wisher arrived at my door. It was Brazilian referee Carlos Simon, who, despite the presence of two of the most influential men in world refereeing said, ‘Football's shit. Football's nothing. Your family is what matters.'

There was more support from Andreas Herren, FIFA's press secretary. I had prepared a media statement, apologizing, but Andreas said I had nothing for which to say sorry. FIFA would handle it, he said, although he could not do anything about the reporters and photographers who were apparently outside hiding in the bushes hoping to get a glimpse of me.

The day continued in a bit of a blur. It was Friday, one day after my calamity. I knew there was a debrief to get through at 6 pm, and that gave me something to think about. It was scheduled for the big room, with a big screen and a big crowd of referees to look at my big mistake.

In fact, most of the criticism was reserved for the assistants for missing an offside and that penalty which should have been awarded. There was a palpable sense of relief in the room. The other referees knew that the biggest mistake of the tournament had been made, and not by them.

After the debrief, some of the others went to another room to watch Switzerland versus South Korea – a nice, quiet game for referee Horacio Marcelo Elizondo, with nine bookings and a controversial goal when he overruled an assistant's flag.

I went to Mark Shield's room with his Aussie colleagues Nathan Gibson and Ben Wilson. Matt Weston, the Premier League's fitness guy, joined us and so did Glenn Turner and Greg Barkey, the fifth official from my Stuttgart match. Some of those present were there to celebrate Australia's success. I was there to drink myself to oblivion and after we had finished all the alcohol we could find, we decided to go to the hotel bar, which we had nicknamed ‘The Far Post'.

I was reeling, which was not good news when my unsteady progress was interrupted by José Maria. He said, ‘The chairman wants to see you.' So I went with him to see
Angel Maria Villar Llona, chairman of the referees committee. He showed me the statement FIFA would be releasing which he hoped would satisfy the press. I knew the media needed me to say something, rather than FIFA, but I did not want to make any more waves. So I said my thanks, and joined the Aussies and the others in The Far Post.

As a result of all the drink, I did get some sleep that Friday night, but alcohol is a depressant, and the following morning was the bleakest yet. There was no debrief to worry about, nothing to focus on and I was pitched into a very bad place.

Even now, when I think back, it frightens me to recall how depressed I was. From time to time I just curled up in a foetal position, hugging myself. I was in a state of intense despair. If you have been there, you have my profound sympathy. If you haven't, then I hope you never will be.

I know now that Graham Barber phoned me every hour and others were trying to get past the hotel switchboard. But I knew that my pain would hurt those who cared about me. I did not want anyone to know how bad it was. With that in mind, I managed to send one of my diary emails. This is what it said:

Thinking of my family and friends provided a pinprick of light in the black cave of my despair. Another came the following day when I summoned the remnants of my shattered spirit and persuaded myself to go on a refs' trip to the Fan Park on the banks of the river in Frankfurt to watch England's match against Ecuador in the first knockout stage.

We had VIP seats, which made us very visible, and I knew the trip would expose me to the sort of ridicule I was expecting for the rest of my life. However, I also knew I could not hide for ever.

With incredibly unhelpful timing, there was a power cut and the screens went dead at the precise moment that David Beckham won the game with a free-kick. We did not see the goal but its significance was obvious to me. If England reached the later stages of the World Cup, there was no way an English referee could also be involved. So perhaps I hadn't lost anything. Another ray of light, another positive thought.

Going to that Fan Park, where everyone could see me, was a big forward step for me, which I think took some inner
strength. Perhaps that fortitude is what people see as arrogance in me. All I know is that, without it, I might still be in that black, black cave.

I need to talk about the two assistants and the fourth official at that match in Stuttgart, because many people have blamed them for what happened – and the truth is that I blamed them at first.

Well, not as soon as I became aware of the mistake; not in that bleak moment in our changing room when it became apparent that I had shown Josip Simunic three yellow cards. Nor when I stood in stark solitude on the pitch afterwards.

But in the long, sleepless hours of that night in the hotel I started to blame them. On the painful journey back to Frankfurt by train, I said nothing, but inside, I blamed them. Back at the referees' base, the feeling that they were responsible festered – and the poison fed off hurtful little signs. The two assistants appeared to be joining the other officials for meals as normal. How could they eat? I certainly couldn't.

They didn't come to offer me their apologies or try to comfort me. Why not? Others were coming to my room, or telephoning or texting me with messages of support and sympathy. Finally, driven by despair and my increasing hurt,
I stomped to Phil Sharp's room. They were both there and I demanded an explanation for the apparent indifference. ‘We just did not know what to say,' they both explained.

There is a saying in football that a referee can only commit suicide but an assistant referee can commit murder. In other words, a referee can only damage his own career but an assistant can wreck a referee's prospects. In the 2002 World Cup, mistakes by an assistant had led to my being sent home – and I had carried the can. I had taken the brunt of the criticism in the media. At the 2006 World Cup, the mistake was mine, but the other officials could have stopped me from committing professional suicide. That was what I believed.

My pre-match instructions to assistants about bookings and sendings-off had been the same for years. I always asked both assistants to keep a record of the cards I showed and to whom they were brandished. I told them, ‘If you are not sure who I have booked, then ask the fourth official or ask me.' I even used to mention the ludicrously unlikely possibility of cautioning someone twice without sending him off. I used to say, ‘Don't let me restart the match in those circumstances. Tell me my mistake so that I can send him off.'

But in the build-up to the World Cup I had worked with Phil Sharp and Glenn Turner as assistants for many, many games. We were a team in more than half of the games I refereed in the 2005/06 season, and they did not want me to repeatedly go through the same pre-match instructions. ‘We know them backwards, Pollie,' they had said. So I stopped my usual pre-game talk. And I did not go through the instructions before the game in Stuttgart.

The fourth official should be the ultimate safety net. At the World Cup he sat next to the match coordinator who had a television monitor and who also listed cautions and send
offs. For the match in Stuttgart, the fourth official was Kevin Stott from the USA. He had been on the FIFA list for eleven years.

In Germany, all match officials had microphones and earpieces to talk to each other. The ref's mike was ‘open' – it was on all the time. When I cautioned Simunic for the first time, I said into the microphone, ‘Caution Croatia number 3, sixty-first minute, block.' The assistants and the fourth official must have heard that. In theory, they should all have noted the caution correctly, as I did.

Then, when I cautioned Simunic again, in stoppage time, I did not say anything into the microphone but neither of the assistants asked me who I had yellow-carded; nor did Kevin, the fourth official. As we now know, I recorded that caution wrongly – in the Australia column of my notebook. Did the assistants record it wrongly? Did they record it at all? I don't know. We have never discussed it.

It has been suggested to me by others that perhaps what the assistants and fourth official did – or did not do – was a compliment to me. Perhaps they just assumed that I would get it right, that I couldn't possibly make a mistake. Perhaps.

The point is, despite what I felt when I was in the ‘cave' of my despair, they were not to blame for what happened in Stuttgart. I wanted to blame someone else, but the person who was culpable was me. I made the original mistake. I was the referee. It was my responsibility.

The fifth official, American Greg Barkey, had an internet blog during the World Cup. In it he likened the chain of events in Stuttgart to waking up in his bed at home, smelling smoke and going down to the kitchen to discover a fire. He ran to the tap but it was not working. The outside mains tap was working but his bucket had a hole in it. He could find no
other receptacle so he went to the fire blanket but it was padlocked. He telephoned the fire brigade but they were on strike. Realizing the house was going to burn down, he ran inside to collect some valuable paperwork including his fire policy … which expired the day before.

If I have interpreted his metaphor correctly, he felt that a chain of events, each of them unlikely and unlucky, combined to create a catastrophe. If just one link of that chain had not been there, then the catastrophe would have been averted. But that misses the point as well. In Greg's metaphor, what caused the fire? In Stuttgart, it was my mistake that was the discarded cigarette end.

British newspapers revelled in my misery. My mistake proved what many reporters and most of their readers believed – that referees are useless. And Graham Poll, the alleged best ref in England, was the biggest clown of the lot. Most writers thought it was utterly hilarious. Some were extremely critical of me – I was the braggart who had become a buffoon. Very few writers seemed to think it was a story about a man who had made a human mistake. One of the milder jokes at my expense was, ‘Never mind new technology to help referees. Graham Poll needs an abacus.'

To make their fun complete, news organizations needed pictures of me looking miserable. A few shots of my family looking upset by my blunder would be good as well. So, while photographers lurked in the shrubs and trees outside the referees' base near Frankfurt, another large contingent of the media descended on Tring and camped outside my house.

Meanwhile, nicer people were visiting me in my black cave, or sending messages which demonstrated understanding and kindness. Every single person who took the trouble
to reach out to me in the darkness did an important, valuable and humane deed and I thank them all.

They included David Beckham, as I have recounted previously in this book. They also included the top man in world football, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, and the head of our own FA, Brian Barwick, whom I have criticized in this book. I have to acknowledge that Brian was solicitous after Stuttgart. I was also contacted by the chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore. Countless referees got in touch. So did friends. So did family.

It would be self-indulgent to quote many of the messages, but I need to place on record my profound and lasting gratitude to my sister-in-law Tina. She sent the following email:

What a shaft of light into my cave that was. But not everyone was so kind. One English referee, not good enough to make the FIFA list and not brave enough to put his name to his message, sent a puerile, vindictive and gleefully gloating text. And a couple of people I imagined would be supportive did not turn out to be that way. But my wife, children, family and real friends could not have done more to show me their affection and that was, and still is, a wonderful but humbling thing.

There was the little detail of FIFA announcing which referees would be kept on for the knockout stages of the World Cup, and which of us would be going home. I already knew which of those groups I would be in, but the process was still painful and prolonged.

I was going home, and was looking forward to it, but before I could make my way back to Julia, and the haven she would provide, she needed some help from me. The media were still laying siege to the Poll house in Tring and, in one of our many telephone conversations, Julia asked me to do something.

I knew that the only thing I could do was to give the news organizations what they wanted – an interview in which I admitted getting it hopelessly wrong. I was feeling raw and damaged but I knew that was what I had to do. I contacted Sky and they quickly arranged for me to face a camera in the grounds of the referees' base, and to face questions from Adam Craig of Sky Sports News. The interview was broadcast live in Britain and quotations from it were picked up by news organizations around the globe.

I took ownership of the mistake. I accepted the blame. I gave a shortened version of how I had found out about the mistake and detailed some of the support I had received subsequently. Then, near the end, came this exchange:

The interview was screened repeatedly that day. Newspapers took screen-grabs of me looking tearful. They had the story and the pictures they wanted. The headlines were about me quitting international football. That wasn't what I had said. I had said I would not referee in any more major tournaments, but accuracy did not matter any more than my feelings.

The interview provoked another flood of messages. Most of them were extremely supportive. A few expressed surprise that I had turned out to be human. The broadcast also did what I had hoped it would: newsdesks called off the pack; the impromptu camp outside my house in Tring dispersed and there was no gang of reporters and photographers at the airport waiting to ambush me when I arrived back at Heathrow. Julia met me, but there was no media scrum. I'd given them what they wanted.

Yet, as I now know, although the journalists outside my house broke camp and went back to their offices, the media attention never really went away throughout the following season, my final as a professional referee.