With our Carling Cup tie against Watford coming up, I felt it necessary to express my opinion, and several concerns, regarding respect. It comes in light of the quite shambolic refereeing decision against them in a recent Championship game against Reading. If you are not quite up to speed with what happened, during a goalmouth scramble the linesman (Nigel Bannister) flagged for a goal for Reading when in fact the ball had gone about 4 yards wide.

Sorry what?

Yep, the linseman gave a goal instead of a corner.

And the referee disallowed it?

Nope. The goal stood.

It is as unbelievable as it sounds. But yes the goal has stood, and the FA have stated that the game cannot, and will not, be replayed.

The statement from the FA reads:

The Laws of the Game give no discretion in these matters – the referee’s decision regarding whether a goal is scored or not is final and binding. Given this explicit position, the League cannot intervene

I would like to clarify before I continue that I am completely in favour of the FA pushing forward with their ‘Respect’ campaign which, all going well, should develop a respect towards officials in players, starting at grassroots level.

However I digress, because after something like this I find it very hard to genuinely muster the politeness towards officials that the FA are demanding. When you log onto the official page of the Respect campaign, you are greeted with their mission statement:

Respect is the FA’s programme of activities to combat unacceptable behaviour in our game at every level – on the pitch and from the sidelines

Personally I would like that changed to read something that resembles more of the following:

Respect is the FA’s programme of activities to combat unacceptable behaviour in our game at every level – from the boardroom to the sidelines and the pitch.

Until the men at the very top warrant the respect that they are expecting fans and players to demonstrate, there will always be problems. How can Andy Williamson (the person responsible for the aforementioned FA statement) who clearly has not the ability to distinguish a ball in the net to a ball off the pitch be responsible for the decisions influence the game on such a major scale? How are we to trust their judgment on matters? How are we supposed to feel comfortable with them running our game?

How about he grew a pair and came out with a statement saying that “it was a grave error on behalf of both the linesman and the referee, the situation has been reviewed and the goal has subsequently been disallowed”? For someone to make a comment like that would do wonders for their Respect campaign.

It wasn’t as if a goal was scored and there was a doubt as to whether it was offside. The ball never actually went between the posts. Unbelievable.

On the topic of posts actually, here is the official ruling that defines a goal:

Law 10: A goal is scored when the whole of the ball passes over the goal line, between the posts and under the crossbar….the team scoring the greater number of goals during a match is the winner.

Pretty clear, but I think it should include the following:

If a ball hits the net, it doesn’t mean it is a goal.

They have even added a diagram in the rule book, for us lowly observers, to make sure there is no doubt as to whether the ball is in the goal or not. I would personally like to refer the officials of the Watford match to that particular diagram.

I’m sure the linesman knows the rules, he just made a mistake.

To everyone at the FA who are responsible for decisions like this, please realise that if you continue to make decisions and statements as absurd as this then do not be suprised when players and fans from clubs across the country are cross with your undeniable neglect of our beautiful game. And it is our beautiful game because without us your jobs would not exist.

Sam