Seeing Red (29 page)

So that is my story so far. Only ‘so far' because, as I write this, I am about to forge a new career and start a new life as Graham Poll, former professional referee. That makes this an appropriate time in my life to take stock, and that, to some extent, is what I have been doing in this book. But I hope to have achieved more than that. I hope
Seeing Red
has introduced you to Graham Poll the man as well as Graham Poll the referee, because there is an important distinction between the two which is significant for football.

To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you about a Test match at Lord's, when I sat with a friend and we struck up a conversation with a father and son sitting in front of us. They came from St Albans and we all got on very well. At the tea interval, I got the beers in. When I returned to our seats with the drinks, the father was chuckling to himself. He turned around to me and said, ‘We were just saying – and you'll have to forgive this – how much you remind us of a bloke we both hate. We're both Arsenal supporters and you look a lot like a referee we detest.'

I could see exactly where that conversation was going, of course, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out my referee's ID card. I showed it to the father and son in front and said, ‘Do you mean him?' They were embarrassed and shocked – shocked that Graham Poll was an ordinary, nice enough bloke. They thought they knew Graham Poll the referee. They were astonished to meet Graham Poll the man.

The point of that anecdote is not that I am a wonderful human being. It is just that I am a human being. I have failings and frailties and, perhaps, some qualities. They are human failings, frailties and qualities.

Now, to further explain the message I want to deliver, let's think about how referees were introduced into football. When the game first had proper rules, in the nineteenth century, there were no refs. The two teams used to decide issues among themselves but there were prolonged disputes, and so it was decreed that only the two captains should make decisions about whether goals had been scored legitimately, and so on. Unfortunately, the captains were often unable to agree, and so it was decided that each team should appoint an umpire. There were still arguments between the two umpires, hence it was decreed that an independent arbiter was needed. A neutral person used to stand on the side of the pitch, in a blazer and cap. If the umpires could not decide something between them, they would refer to this neutral chap. Because he was referred to, he was known as the referee.

Times changed and the game evolved, but from that moment on, it has always relied on an arbiter. It still does. So, without getting too preachy, this author's message is that the referee is human and that he or she is simply an independent, neutral arbiter. He or she is not someone who has
turned up to ruin your weekend. He or she is just a person doing a difficult job.

In fact, it is a weird job. It must be one of the weirdest jobs in the world. Those who do it understand the appeal and yet those who have never done it will never understand why anyone would want to. Everyone assumes he or she knows everything about refereeing, everyone is prepared to give ‘advice' about it, and yet very few people are prepared to do it. So here comes another message. I would say to anyone who loves football, or whose son or daughter loves football, that refereeing is a great option.

In the days immediately after I announced my retirement I was accused of damaging the recruitment and retainment of referees. Apparently, because I was quitting, and because I was critical of the lack of support given to refs by the FA, I would discourage parks referees from persevering. Well, it would have been dishonest for me to walk away quietly and pretend that the world of refereeing is perfect – and new referees would have discovered the reality soon enough any way. No, I wanted, and still want, to provoke a debate about the way the FA supports referees. Then perhaps, just perhaps, things might improve – but not for me. I won't benefit from any improvement, but perhaps things might improve for the men and women at the grass roots, for those higher up the ladder and for those at the top. Then the recruitment and retainment of referees will become much easier.

I certainly believe refereeing is worthwhile and rewarding. It is an involvement in football. It will mature you as a person. It will make you a much more rounded individual. It will make you more capable, more self-reliant and more resilient.

Of course, if you take it up, you'll be accused of bias. In the last weeks of my professional career, I spoke at a dinner in Sheffield and afterwards a Sheffield United fan came up to me and said, ‘Come on, you can admit it now. You were biased against the Blades, weren't you?' My answer was curt and included a swear word.

Then I appeared on a BBC radio phone-in and one caller asked whether it was true, as his dad had told him for an absolute certain fact, that I had once attended a function at some Arab bank or other and admitted that I was a Tottenham fan. Because I was on radio, I managed a less curt, less profane response. It reminded me of the year 2000 and the allegation, before the FA Cup Final, that I was a Chelsea supporter.

As always, I reminded myself that the word ‘fan' is short for ‘fanatic'. Football fans are fanatics. Their passion is one of the things which makes football so engrossing and compelling. Unfortunately, however, that passion also means that fans see every refereeing decision through the prism of their own bias. Every time one of their players is sent crashing to the turf, they believe utterly that he has been fouled. Every time one of their players clatters into an opponent, they believe completely that it is a fair tackle. Their view of events might not be true, but they want it to be true so fervently that they convince themselves subconsciously. Then, if the referee does not agree with them – well, the referee must be useless or biased.

A similar thing happens with managers. They too are passionate and fanatical about their teams, and so their view of what happens during a game is distorted by that passion. I am sure that a manager believes it when he says something like, ‘The ref didn't give us anything' or complains that ‘If we
were a big club, we'd have had a penalty.' They believe it – but that doesn't make it true.

If you doubt what I am saying, then go to a match when you don't care at all about either team. Then you will see how often players, managers and fans get worked up about perfectly accurate refereeing decisions. You will see how passion distorts their view of what has happened.

Yes, I understand why fans, managers and players, get so worked up. For instance, in my last game as a professional referee – that Play-off Final between Derby and West Brom – I ignored West Brom's appeals for a penalty. I have no doubt that some West Brom supporters shouted ‘Cheat!', but why on earth should I have wanted Derby to win? Was I party to some wicked, secret conspiracy against the Albion? Of course not, and to suggest so is a kind of madness. But it is a madness you hear repeated up and down the country every week.

Biased? No, I can categorically state that I never deliberately favoured any team or any player in any circumstance – not once in 1554 games. I never did it, and I was never even tempted. Nor have I ever met an English referee I suspected of bias. We love the game too much. The neutrality of the referee has been a central tenet of football from the moment teams started asking a chap in his cap and blazer to be the independent arbiter. That is why referees are so hurt and angered by any allegation that they are not impartial.

Now let's move on to the question of whether that referee you shouted at the other weekend really was useless. The important thing to remember about that is that there is a pyramid of refereeing just as there is a pyramid of teams. The very best teams are at the top of the pyramid and they get the top officials – those who have clambered up that ladder and
survived and flourished under the sort of scrutiny and appraisal that is not matched in any other profession.

Lower down the pyramid, the teams are less good – and so are the referees. They are refs on their way up, on their way down, or at their natural level. And so it goes on, all the way down the football pyramid – the teams get a little worse and so do the referees. So if you think the referees you get are not very good, perhaps the club you play for or support isn't very good! If you are a Sunday morning footballer, you'll get a Sunday morning ref. It's a bit much, if your centre-forward traps the ball further than he can kick it, to expect the referee to be magnificent. When I refereed in the Isthmian League, it was the correct level for me at that time. I was not as good a referee as I was when I was in the Premiership years later – but then the players on those Isthmian League pitches were not as good as the Premiership players, either.

I fell into refereeing, but within four games I loved it. It was not as good as playing. I didn't get the dressing room camaraderie or all the crack of having a beer later with teammates. But I did enjoy something of the latter with the excellent North Herts Referees' Society. And I was a lot better as a ref than I was as a player. So I embarked on a career which I now look back on with pride – and a sense of appreciative wonder.

Refereeing gave me countless remarkable experiences that money could not buy. As I tell people when I speak at dinners, Roman Abramovich is rich enough to have bought Chelsea and, if he wanted, he could select himself to play at centre-forward. But he could not referee a Premiership match, because that is something you can't buy.

Refereeing also gave me some weird but memorable adventures. I have eaten things I could not identify. I have seen
some of the hairiest belly dancers I never wanted to see. I visited countries which I had not even heard of before. And I didn't visit them as a tourist – I was there as a participant in a big event. I have had experiences I could not have imagined.

For instance, as just one of countless examples, I never dreamed that I would be in a car with a police escort in the middle of Moscow, driving on the wrong side of the road and playing chicken with cars coming the other way. The attitude of the Moscow police was that the cars coming in the opposite direction would just have to pull over. It was not an entirely relaxing way for a referee to prepare for a match, and it is not something you should try over here if you take up refereeing and are in a hurry to get to a game in the Welwyn and Hatfield Sunday League.

But my refereeing journey was mostly a huge amount of fun. Think about it: if I offered you the chance now to do a job for twenty-seven years with the promise that you would enjoy almost all of it, you'd take it. Of course you would. Even in the last of my twenty-seven seasons, when things became difficult, I did enjoy many games and relish many aspects of refereeing.

So why did I quit? Well, let me tell you what I did in February 2007 while I was sitting on an aeroplane flying to Rome for a UEFA referees' course. I thought I had made my decision to retire, but I was still mulling it over because I was still having sequences of matches that I really enjoyed. So, like a salesperson trying to figure out how to attain his next target, I made a list as I sat on that plane. No, I made two lists: one was the reasons to remain as a referee; the other was a list of reasons to give up.

The ‘Reasons To Carry On' list was very short. The most persuasive item appeared to be ‘Financial Security'. It would
be a safe option to continue refereeing, but actually that was not very convincing at all, because I don't believe you can referee honestly and fearlessly if you are worried about the impact a decision might have on your future income.

The ‘Reasons To Stop' list was a lot longer. Very near the top was ‘Family'. My family had endured enough.

People say that, for a man, being present at the birth of his first child is the best day of his life. Well, I was there when Gemma arrived in the world. I remember that the sun was streaming in through the window of the delivery room at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. But I cannot pretend I enjoyed the experience. I found it very difficult. My wife, Julia, was going through agony and I was powerless to do anything other than hold her hand and tell her I loved her.

I think that for Julia, supporting my refereeing became a little like that in the end. She saw me reviled and ridiculed and that I was no longer invulnerable to that treatment. She saw that I was suffering, but she could do nothing to stop that suffering. She never once asked me to stop refereeing, but I knew, without words, that she would be happier when I did.

With my mum, the situation was similar. I have written about how I understand her pride in my achievements, but I cannot begin to comprehend what it must have been like for a loving parent to watch me unravel in Stuttgart and then watch my anguish later.

So ‘Family' was high on the list of reasons to pack up. Another was ‘Injury'. My back would not have let me go on for much longer. But the real reason I had continued refereeing after Stuttgart was that I did not want to be beaten. And, as I sat there on that aeroplane making my lists, I came to the happy conclusion that I had not been beaten. I could keep
going for another season if I wanted but I did not have to keep going to prove anything. If I stopped, it would not be because I was running away from anything.

That was a liberating moment. I concluded that, if I kept going I would be doing so for the sake of it, out of habit. There were no more refereeing targets for me to aim at – just more of the same. So, alongside the ‘Reasons To Stop' list, I wrote a four-word summary of my thoughts.

It said, ‘THE RACE IS RUN'.

I hope that my new life will include media work and some public speaking, because I want to redress what I see as the imbalance in the way football is talked about. There is far too much negativity. It disturbs and distresses me when I hear football compared unfavourably with other sports and when I read constant carping about the game.