Are London people unfit to referee… yes according to the PGMO « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
In my earlier article about the Professional Game Match Officials I commented on how the referees’ web site had been shut down and how the referees’ association has taken on some new referees for the Premier League. Not many but at least a (very) small step in the right direction.
But then I got in to something else. Some people have said something about an existing bias based on to where the refs come from. So why not take a look at that I thought. Now I must admit that as a person from another part of the world, for me England is, well, just England. Come to think of it for me England is by and large just another word for London. But this is just me as a silly foreigner thinking. But anyway I never imagined that there could be something like a dislike between people in England based on to where they live or come from. But as some people talk about it I had to see if there was something in to it.
And so I did a little examination and compared it with a few numbers we can find about England. First of all I cut England in three pieces. The South/London and this included: East of England, London, South East England and South West England. A middle part that includes: East Midlands and the West Midlands. And then the North which includes North East England, North West England and Yorkshire. I know for some people in London the Midlands are also part of the North but I like to cut things in 3 so I just did it like that.
Then I started to look at where the refs come from and put them in aforementioned categories. And then we have the refs divided in South, Middle and North and this is how things stand for the moment:
North:
| North East England | Clattenburg | Moss | Oliver | ||||
| North West England | Dean | Foy | Jones | Halsey | Mason | Swarbrick | Taylor |
| Yorkshire | Riley (head) | Webb | Atkinson | Marrinner |
Middle:
| East Midlands | Friend | Walton |
| West Midlands | Dowd | Atwell |
South/London:
| London | |
| South East England | |
| South West England | Probert |
In numbers we get :
North 13 refs
Middle 4 refs
South/London …… 1 ref. That is one. And as Probert is not really from London we could say that London has no refs in the EPL. Now of course it could be that people in London are not fit enough to become a referee.
Come to think of it if we just look at the numbers from the PGMO people in the south of England are just not fit enough to become a ref for whatever reason.
Now when I visited London in the past I never noticed anything wrong with the people over there. Most of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting looked rather normal to me. So why on earth is there not one person in the South of England who has made it to the EPL as a ref? I will try to come up with some kind of explanation later on in this article but let us first take a look at a few other numbers.
Because if we put the numbers of refs and compare this with the population in those parts we get a real strange picture.
The population of the North is around 29% of the total population in England. In the Middle we have around 19% and in the South/London we have around 52% of the population. And if we take this number and presume that people in England are fit enough to ref a game wherever they are born we have the situation and I also put in there how it should be if all people were equal in England for the PGMO.
| North | |
| North East England |
3 |
| North West England |
7 |
| Yorkshire |
3 |
| TOTAL NOW |
13 |
| Population needed for one ref |
1.116.234 |
| According to population should be |
5,22 |
| Middle | |
| East Midlands |
2 |
| West Midlands |
2 |
| TOTAL NOW |
4 |
| Population needed for one ref |
2.359.879 |
| According to population should be |
3,40 |
| South/London | |
| East of England |
0 |
| London |
0 |
| South East England |
0 |
| South West England |
1 |
| TOTAL NOW |
1 |
| Population needed for one ref |
26.070.748 |
| According to population should be |
9,38 |
So apparently there is some serious health problem in the South of England. Because refs need to be fit and apparently people in the South of England are not fit enough to ref a game in the EPL
The North has 9 refs in the EPL and if you look at the population this should be around 5 refs. They got almost the double. The middle are almost where they should be. But the region South/London has only 1 (one) ref and they should have around 9.
Well you might try to explain this in the comment section but I cannot find any other reason apart from the fact that Riley is doing all he can to have as much Northern based refs as possible and hold London refs out of the EPL.
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