Seeing Red

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.’

As soon as I reached the City of Manchester Stadium, I was dogged by a Sky TV crew. The cameraman followed my every step as I went inside and again later as I checked the pitch. But the game between City and Newcastle went off without a goal or controversy. The assembled media pack was greatly disappointed. I was delighted.

CHAPTER FIVE

No Defence from John Terry

The Chelsea affair was dragging on. I telephoned FA headquarters at Soho Square every day to check if there was any progress. I wanted the cloud of suspicion over me dispersed. I talked to Graham Noakes, the FA’s Director of Football Administration and Refereeing, or to Tarik Shanel in the FA’s Compliance Department. Every day the answer was the same: the investigation was ‘ongoing’.

Why? My report, and those of the other match officials, had been submitted within twenty-four hours of the game. Why, after all this time, had they not supported their four officials? I knew that the Compliance Department had compiled a full video sequence of Terry leaving the pitch. It confirmed that he had said nothing to me and that I had said nothing to him. The Chelsea and England captain’s version was clearly wrong. Yet the FA seemed reluctant to conclude their inquiry. Did they not want to charge the England captain?

By the evening of Friday, 17 November – twelve days after the match at Tottenham – I’d had enough waiting. I telephoned Graham Noakes at the FA and threatened to pull out of the following day’s game (Reading versus Charlton) and said that unless there was some action on the inquiry I would give a story to a newspaper telling them of my disgust with the football authorities. I would say that the FA had failed every referee in the country. After all, that is exactly what they had done.

Just making my double warning endangered my career. If I had actually carried out either threat, then who knows what would happened. The authorities find it a lot easier to sack a referee than to back him.

I did referee Reading’s game against Charlton, but I should not have – I was terrible. My confidence was shot to pieces. The FA knew I would go through with the other threat if necessary. I would definitely take my story to a newspaper because I’d had enough.

Finally, on 30 November, twenty-five days after the Spurs–Chelsea game, the FA published a statement on their website. It said that John Terry had been charged with improper conduct for making his allegation that I had changed my story about his sending-off. The rest of the FA statement is worth reporting because it tells you all you need to know about that organization. It read:

Graham Poll has also been cleared by The FA of saying anything inappropriate towards Chelsea players during the same match regarding their discipline. Responses sought from Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Chelsea FC and the match officials confirm that Poll did not say that Chelsea needed “to be taught a lesson”. There will be no action against any parties on this matter. Chelsea manager José Mourinho has been reminded of his responsibilities for media comments related to Poll’s performance in the same match and asked to use the relevant official channels to give feedback on the performance of referees. He will not face any formal disciplinary action.

Once again, I was vindicated. I had not said that Chelsea needed to be taught a lesson. I had been cleared. Cole, however, was not punished at all for glibly making the accusation, nor was Mourinho punished for suggesting that I was incompetent and that I did not care. The Chelsea manager had been ‘reminded of his responsibilities’. That was telling him.

Terry had fourteen days to respond to the charge. Initially Chelsea indicated that he would request a personal hearing. Chelsea normally hire top barristers for disciplinary hearings and it seemed they were gearing themselves up for another fight with authority, but then on Monday, 8 January, more than two months after the match, Terry – or someone on his behalf – contacted the FA to withdraw the request for a personal hearing and to admit the charge. The England captain’s admission was an acceptance that his version of events was inaccurate.

The next day the FA held their hearing, using only written submissions. Terry was fined £10,000 – about a morning’s wages. That was telling him as well. However, the FA issued an unprecedented statement. It said: ‘We were extremely disappointed the integrity of Poll was questioned. We note the late admission to the charge and the excellent previous disciplinary record of John Terry. But we are also disappointed that no public apology had been forthcoming for his admitted improper conduct.’

It was a limp, puny condemnation. But it was still a condemnation of the England captain by the Football Association and so it was, in its own way, remarkable.

Ashley Cole had blithely sworn at me and then made shocking accusations about me, but at least his remarks had been straight after the game when he was steamed up about losing to Spurs. By contrast, Terry had produced his inaccurate allegations two days after the match, when he had had time to think about what he wanted to say about his sending-off.

His account had made damaging allegations about what I had said. Video recordings disproved his account – and yet he simply kept quiet. He simply let the FA case against him proceed and paid the paltry fine. He did not apologize for his account, even though it questioned the integrity of a referee and added to the corrosive criticism of officials which erodes the entire game.

David Beckham, Terry’s predecessor as England captain, demonstrated privately to me that he is a decent, caring human being. By sending me a message of support in Germany and then telephoning as soon as I got home, he behaved as I think an England captain should.

John Terry had his version of events proven false and then was not big enough to apologize or even acknowledge publicly what he had done.

You will make your own judgement about whether that behaviour befits an England captain. I know what I think.

CHAPTER SIX

Stop the Ride

By the time the Football Association’s disciplinary wheels started to move to exonerate me, Julia and I were on our way to Lavenham, in Suffolk, for a break. But there was no break from recognition.

We were pulled over by a police car after a slightly dodgy overtaking manoeuvre but the officers really stopped me because they realized it was me. They let us continue on our journey after they told me they were Ipswich fans – and after I pointed out that I had refereed their club’s 9–0 home defeat by Manchester United in 1995.

After checking in at the hotel, we went for a walk but a white van stopped and the driver wanted to ask us for directions to somewhere or other. He climbed out of his van and the first thing he said was, ‘It’s Graham Poll.’

Then, that night, we ordered drinks in a pub and a guy in his mid-thirties said, ‘I’ll get those … it is Graham isn’t it? I feel for you. You’ve had a rough time. I’ve started refereeing this season and I base my game on yours. So I’m shit as well.’

Next, at dinner in our hotel, a couple at a nearby table started talking about me loudly enough for me to hear. And finally, after signing the bill but then deciding I wanted to add to it by buying a bottle of wine, I was told that two waiters had taken the bill because they wanted to copy my signature.

I was not quite sure what that was about. But I was sure that Julia and I would never ‘get away from it all’ while I remained controversial Graham Poll, the referee who made the huge mistake in the World Cup. I started to understand that the 2006/07 season should be my last as a referee.

There is no upper age limit for referees in England now, thanks to anti-age discrimination laws. But FIFA referees must retire from the international list at the end of the calendar year in which they reach 45. So I would come off the international list in 2008, and I had always intended to stop refereeing altogether that year. The plan was that I could either quit after the 2008 European Championships or at the end of that year. I would not continue refereeing in England without the international badge. I had worked so hard to earn it.

After the 2006 World Cup, I knew I would not be going to Euro 2008. But once I had decided not to quit there and then, I still had 2008 in my mind as my retirement year. That meant at least two more seasons and possibly two and a bit. But as the first of those two seasons unfolded, and I became dispirited and disillusioned, I began to think that I would hang up my whistle – as the cliché goes – in the summer of 2007.

In November 2006 I went to see Graham Barber – the ex-referee and a good, good friend – at his place in Spain and he said, ‘Get through this season and then see how you feel.’ He told me I should not let ‘them’ beat me. By them, he meant the unsupportive football authorities. But, increasingly in the next few months, I began to suspect that I was already beaten.

I had come home from the World Cup with a terrible, mortal wound. To keep going for two more seasons, as I wanted, I needed support from the FA. Yet they allowed my integrity to be questioned. Instead of supporting me, the FA just looked on as my wound was ripped open and made worse.

In December 2006, I refereed AC Milan against Lille in the Champions League. As the teams were waiting in the tunnel before the tie, Dario Simic, Milan’s Croatian midfielder, came over to me. I had sent him off on that fateful night in Stuttgart. In Milan, Simic looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘I am so sorry for what happened. We knew Simunic had already been booked. We should have told you. I am so sorry.’

Lille won 2–0. After the game, Simic came over to me again. He repeated. ‘I am sorry. Please accept my shirt.’ I did not know whether to laugh or cry, hug him or hit him. In the end, I just accepted the shirt – in the spirit in which it had been offered.

Later, Simunic promised to send me a shirt as a memento of the night we made history. I accepted that gesture as well with as much good grace as I could muster. But there could be no closure about Stuttgart. Every time I was involved in a refereeing controversy, it coloured people’s perception of what had happened and was usually mentioned in the media reports.

Yet one game gave me a glimpse of how things might be different for me, and for all referees – if all managers were as honest as Stuart Pearce. In the very next match I reffed after going to Milan, I red-carded Manchester City’s Bernardo Corradi in the final minutes of a defeat at Old Trafford. I had already cautioned him and then, in my opinion, he ‘dived’ to try to win a penalty. I cautioned him again and so sent him off.

My decision was widely praised, but only because Pearce, the City manager, backed me and not his player. Pearce said, ‘I have no complaints about the sending-off. Bernardo went down a little bit too easily and I am not like the other nineteen managers, who would sit here and give you a load of cock and bull about it.’

Great. That is what you want to hear when you have sent someone off. How could the fans or the press have a go at me when Pearce had not? That lifted my spirits, and that game at Old Trafford was followed by a run of matches which went well. But then my last two assignments of 2006 brought two more rows.

Late in the Charlton versus Fulham match, on 27 December, assistant referee Steve Artis flagged for handball by Charlton’s Djimi Traore. I was in no position to see, so I backed my assistant. Fulham equalized from the free-kick. TV replays showed it was not handball and so Charlton, who were battling to avoid relegation, felt robbed. After the game, Charlton manager Alan Pardew complained, ‘In the last few minutes of the match, when my players have forgotten what it’s like to win a game of football, I expect them to be nervous and make silly mistakes. I don’t expect match officials to make similar mistakes.’

The point, surely, is that officials do make mistakes, exactly like players. It was Artis’s first season but I wrote in my official report that I would be happy for him to run the line in any game I refereed. He had been outstanding until that one, human, error.

Then, with four days of 2006 remaining, I was fourth official at Vicarage Road for Watford against Wigan. In the second half, with the score at 1–1, torrential rain turned the pitch into a paddy field. Steve Tanner, who was in charge of his second Premier League game, asked my advice but it was still his decision to abandon the game. It was the correct decision, as well. But it was not the weather or even the ref who got the blame. According to the many media reports that highlighted and criticized my involvement, it was me. When I raised a glass on New Year’s Eve, the toast was, ‘Good riddance to 2006.’

January was like December, with ups and downs. I believe the expression is ‘a rollercoaster of emotions’, but the truth is that, by then, I knew I wanted to get off the ride. That thought became sharper and more definite in January and soon it was an irrevocable decision. There were still plenty of ‘ups’ but they were never sufficient to make me change my mind. The 2006/07 season would be my last.

On the last day of January, I was appointed to a Chelsea match for the first time since John Terry had made up that story about me. The Premier League had waited and waited, but we all knew that I had to officiate with Chelsea again.

Terry was injured and not playing. But as I was warming up, he walked past me and made a small gesture of acknowledgement – a slight nod and a partial raising of his open palm. Was it to say, ‘Hello’? Was it to say, ‘Sorry’? Who knows?

The other Chelsea players started the game by ignoring me completely – not rudely, but just not indulging in any of the usual banter or comments. Then, slowly, things began to get back to normal. At one point, when Ashley Cole was being put on a stretcher, Didier Drogba said to me, ‘Ignore all of them. We know you are a good referee.’

By ‘all of them’ he could have meant the crowd, who were abusing me, or the media or even the other Chelsea players. I didn’t know what he meant, and it didn’t matter. He was just trying to encourage me. With that, he went to give me a ‘high five’. I responded instinctively and we slapped palms. I dare say I got more criticism for that – for being over-familiar with players and a bit too ‘show biz’, but, for me, it was a lovely moment. There were other good moments too, but by then I knew I was going to finish.

When I had decided, after Germany, to keep going, it was the right decision but for the wrong reason. I had thought, ‘You could get a Champions League Final, Pollie,’ but that was the wrong type of motivation. You can’t referee just because of the possibility of one match – not least because, as happened in 2005, 2006 and 2007, English teams might reach the Champions League Final which would mean I could not referee it. Carrying on purely for the chance of a Champions League Final was the wrong motivation for another reason as well. It was wrong because the only inducement that really works is that you love it – and I no longer did.

I was still refereeing well, I believe. Certainly I was still making big calls without worrying about anything other than whether I thought they were right. In February, Tottenham’s Robbie Keane scored twice against Bolton, but then he stopped a shot going into the Spurs goal with his arm. To me, it was a deliberate act. So it was handball. So it was denying the opposing team a goal. So it was a sending-off. Robbie said, ‘On my life, it was an accident,’ but I went with what I believed I had seen. That was the only way I could referee. So when Robbie said, ‘I’ve never been sent off,’ I replied, ‘You have now.’

An injury prevented my refereeing Liverpool–Manchester United and I was really disappointed – because it would have been my last time in charge of one of English football’s big, set-piece fixtures. Why did I care if I no longer loved refereeing? Well, I suppose that I was noting the milestones as I neared my finish.

If I had any lingering doubts about finishing – if there were any tiny doubts loitering anywhere in my mind – they were eradicated by another game, another fresh set of accusations and a reporter and a photographer appearing on my doorstep.

The match, on 9 April, Easter Monday, was Charlton against Reading at The Valley – or relegation-threatened Charlton, as the media felt obliged to call them, at home to the season’s surprise success story.

In the first half, Charlton’s Alexandre Song Billong committed a bad foul, and so I booked him. At half-time, Alan Pardew, who had been so upset with an assistant referee’s decision the last time I had been to The Valley, came to my changing room. In theory, managers are only allowed in the referee’s room thirty minutes after the finish of the match and, normally, I would have kept him out. But he was in before I realized it was him and, besides, lots of managers make comments at half-time, usually in the tunnel on the way off. Arsène Wenger does it, for instance, and so does José Mourinho. Most of them do. Whether they are just getting something off their chests, or hoping to influence you in the second half, it doesn’t matter. You are not going to be influenced any way.

Pardew said, ‘All I want to say is be careful with Song. Don’t send him off.’

I said, ‘Alan, give me some credit,’ by which I meant that I would referee properly. I was not seeking to send off Song, or anyone else.

He said, ‘Thanks’ and headed off.

In any game of football, if a player has one yellow card and then commits a foul which is not worth a second caution, you call him to you and make it clear to him – and to everyone in the ground – that it’s ‘one more and you are off’. You pointedly indicate the tunnel, to make it clear, ‘That is where you will be going if you are not careful.’ The reason you do that is to sell your next decision. You are telling him, and telling the crowd, what might happen. Then, if it does happen, everybody accepts it.

So, in the second half, when Song committed a foul which was not worth a second yellow, I went through that whole warning routine with him. Soon after that, Pardew took Song off and replaced him with a substitute.

I went home after the game, content with another job well done. But, unbeknown to me, at his press conference, Pardew said, ‘At half-time I went to see Graham Poll and I said “I need to have some signal if he is getting close to being sent off.” He sent me that signal so Alex had to come off. It was full credit to Graham. That’s the sort of refereeing you need.’

Pardew was trying to praise me. His recollection of our conversation was a little different to mine, but not significantly so. But the media took his comments to mean that he and I had concocted some secret deal. The implication was that I had favoured Charlton.

The next day, when I was sitting in my study, I saw two men pitch up at my front door: a little chap with a notebook and another bloke with a camera. Julia went to the door. They told her they were from the Mirror. She told them I was busy. So they went to wait in their two separate cars.

Next, two football reporters from another newspaper telephoned me separately. One admitted, when I asked him, that it was only a story because it was me and because of Stuttgart. The other writer from that newspaper, a friend, said he needed a bit of information so that he could ‘kill’ the story.

I thought it was all unbelievable. I had refereed the game really, really well and yet I had headlines in the papers and people on my doorstep. There had been no clandestine deal, no special signal for Alan Pardew. Yet newspapers and their readers were quite ready to believe that I would do something partisan. That assumption – that I would favour one side – was what hurt.

One reason for that assumption was that people are always ready to assume the worst about any referee, but another reason for the assumption in this particular case was because it was me – the bloke who had messed up in Stuttgart. I’d made a big mistake in Germany. I was fallible. I could easily get something badly wrong at Charlton. That was the reasoning, and that was why I had to pack up that season.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Despicable Outburst

I kept my decision to retire a secret for as long as possible. If I had announced it straightaway then pundits would have speculated that it was because of Stuttgart. They would have been right, but I did not need Stuttgart discussed again.

I told my family, of course, and the youngest member of the clan almost gave the game away. Harry, my little son, had a ‘secrets book’ at school. It was part of his school’s anti-bullying policies. If a child was bullied, he or she could write about it in the secrets book. Harry wrote in his book, ‘I can’t tell anyone but my dad is going to stop being a referee.’

I did a rather better job of keeping my secret, although it caused a few problems. For instance, I knew that I would not be refereeing any more international matches after that last season, 2006/07, and I knew that my final total would be close to one hundred. As someone who always set himself targets, I thought it would be excellent to reach that landmark, but, of course, UEFA did not know that my career was ending and were in no hurry to give me match number 100.

I reached ninety-eight before Christmas, but then there was a long, unexpected gap between appointments. When match ninety-nine arrived, it was a UEFA Cup clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Benfica in Paris – the only major European city in which I had not refereed. That was great, but I began to wonder if I would actually reach three figures.

I was not appointed for any of the March internationals and so I spoke to the FA and asked if there was a problem. They said, ‘No’ and that I was going to get an international in June. They thought that was good news for me. I could not tell them that it meant I would either have to delay my retirement or accept that it would be ninety-nine and out.

Then my friend Yvan Cornu, UEFA’s referees’ manager, hinted that I might not have to wait until June for game 100, and I started trying to work out what he meant. Three English clubs reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, which ruled out an English referee. The first legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals were also out because I was speaking at a dinner with Pierluigi Collina – he was on the UEFA referees’ committee by then, and I assumed that he would not want to mess up the plans for the dinner. That left only the second legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals.