Graham Poll – A Lesson In Refereeing Required

I thought I had seen some poor football refereeing by Mark Shield and Eddie Lennie over the years with Perth Glory in the NSL/A-League. How wrong I was. Graham Poll, an Englishman no less and therefore should be one of the finest refs for a football match, has just shown how bad a referee can be. And on the stage of the greatest showpiece of world football no less, the World Cup.

Rules of the game that need to be learned and administered properly - do yourself a favour Graham Poll and study up.

1. Penalty – when a player pulls an opposition player down in the box a penalty is given. Tomas had his arm wrapped around Mark Viduka at the six minute mark in the penalty area, pulled him down, and no penalty was awarded.
2. Penalty – when a player intentionally handles the ball in the penalty area he is to receive a yellow card and a penalty is to be awarded.
3. Sending Off – when a player, like Josip Simunic, is given two yellow cards he is to be sent off. Not THREE yellow cards before sending off. Even the official match report only notes two yellow cards. FIFA have stuffed up big time here.

Talk about a bad run for the Aussies when it comes to referees in the 2006 World Cup. In their first match the Egyptian referee, Essam Ab Del Fatah, didn’t spot two Japanese defenders interfering with our goalkeeper, Mark Schwarzer, and allowed a goal that should never have stood. In their second match the German referee, Markus Merk, protected the Brazilians as much as possible and denied Australia a fair go. And then this, in the biggest match of Australia’s history with the chance of progressing to the second round at stake, Graham Poll puts in an absolute shocker. I don’t seriously expect to see him refereeing future games at this World Cup. Two penalties missed and a botched sending off. Did the Germans give him a rule book written in German, or more likely Croatian, before the game?

Thank goodness we came good and finished the match 2-2 which was enough to go through to the second round where we will face Italy. Remember what Korea did to them four years ago? With a decent ref in charge the Azzurri had better look out.

FIFA require taking a good, long look at themselves as an organisation too. Talk about playing against 12 men. Bloody terrible. Here's a better match report that outlines the refereeing inconsistencies.