Football reduced to the survival of the fittest. The untold referee index – gameweek 3 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

by Walter Broeckx

So let us have a look at the ref from the game against Airburn Rovers – Arsenal. Ref in charge was Mr. Foy who had received a fair deal of criticism after the game Stoke City – Tottenham H.  And he deserved that criticism as he was truly bad in the Stoke game.

But how did he do at our away game ?

The first miss he made was not giving a yellow card against Song early in the game when Song was bringing someone down rather cynically.

Next important thing was that all three goals were within the rules – nothing to report.

And then he gave a yellow card for a blatant pull on the shirt from Givet who was testing the quality of Walcott’s newly designed top.

If this would have been all that there was to report Mr. Foy would have a fairly good game. But for the first time this season I feel the need the bring in the other decisions table as there are a few things I should report and take in to account.

Let us start with the wrestling in the penalty area. I don’t know how the FA is dealing with the instructions from Fifa but in other parts of the world the refs get the instructions to act before a corner or long throw is taken. This means that when you seen players holding each other, wrestling each other, blocking each other, blocking the keeper, … you should stop the free kick or throw in, or corner, from being taken.  You then call over the people who are doing all those kind of things that are against the laws of the game, and warn them that you will take action and then take action.

Nothing of that kind to see with Mr. Foy. As a ref you should be the boss on the field and it should be you who is telling the players what to do. Now after seeing this game (and the summary of the Stoke-Tottenham game) it is clear that Mr. Foy is not the boss on his field. He just lets players do what they want and he just accepts the outcome. If the defender wins the illegal battle, fair for him. If the striker wins the illegal battle, also fair for him. He just let things happen, in the rules or outside the rules it doesn’t matter for him. The survival of the fittest seems to be his motto when refereeing the game.

And I don’t want to say that our players didn’t commit fouls. Because when you allow attackers to start using those tactics the defenders start to react and then you get this scenes where 12 players in total are holding each other and all are committing fouls. So as a ref there is indeed nothing you can do after that because you cannot punish 12 fouls at the same time. But you have to act BEFORE the fouling starts and warn the players about what they are doing. Nothing with Mr. Foy of that kind. He just let the players do what they want and by allowing this he makes a fool of himself as a ref.

Now I could go and count all the scenes when he didn’t act in accordance with the instructions but I will keep it to five situations and a score of five points. And he gets a score of 1/5 because at one occasion he actually gave a foul when Almunia was pushed out off the field when he had collected the ball. But if I really would have to count all the scenes it would be maybe some 15 in total I think.

And then we have the question which was asked by Terrence McGovern and which I was going to take on anyway: “Yesterday, during an Arsenal attack a Blackburn defender was guilty of a blatant handball which broke to THEO who converted from what appeared to be an offside position. The offside was deemed to be the dominant offence and it resulted in a free kick even though Blackburn were guilty of a blatant hand ball on the edge of their box. How does that work exactly?”

First of all, the handball was outside the box so it never would have been a penalty.  But beyond that…

The instructions are that as a ref you have to punish the first foul. If we analyse the situation we come to the following conclusion. Theo was in a offside position. But an offside position itself is not a punishable offence. You must get the ball, or interfere with play, before you can be punished. They call this the “wait and see” rule which means that you only raise the flag for offside when the offside is punishable.  So if the ball would have gone to Theo without anyone being near it would have been offside.

But because the ref has to punish the first foul (this means happening in real time) he should have punished the handball from the Blackburn player and give a free kick to Arsenal. Because the first foul that  happened (in time) was handball and then after that foul the offside was punishable.

But I can understand that assistant raised his flag to indicate the offside position. He maybe couldn’t see the handball and he had to make sure he made the offside signal to indicate the punishable offside situation from the moment Theo touched the ball.

It was up to the referee to then take his responsibility and give the free kick for handball.  And even give a thumbs up to his assistant for signalling the offside but he then should have made it clear that the first punishable foul on the pitch was the handball. It is very easy to do for the whole stadium as you make a gesture with your hand and point to it, and everyone would know what happened.

But as we know of Mr. Foy, and as I described him earlier on, he never takes the difficult road and always leaves things like they are. He could hide himself behind his linesman flagging and he followed the linesman decision. So yet again Mr. Foy has showed that he doesn’t take responsibility and takes things in hands. 0/1 points for this.

So where does this takes us in total

Cards 1/2

Goals 3/3

This would mean a total of 75% BUT for the reasons mentioned above I have to change this and take in account his failures on the other decisions

Other decisions 1/6

And if we then make a total then the final score is 56 %. Remember 90% means a very good game and this score, even without the other decision score is far from 90%.

The only advice I can give to Mr. Foy is to work on his game management and personality,  and let the players feel you really are in charge and also a good read of the rule book at times can be helpful. So yes we won the game but I really feel that the ref was poor, but it didn’t affect the final outcome of the game.

PS : I would like to add that if you have any questions about the rules just feel free to ask. Even in the comment section from other articles. If I see them I will take them in to next week article. You can also ask questions about non-Arsenal games but then I would like to ask you if you could provide me with a link to some images because it is very difficult to judge a situation and not having seen it.

Walter Broeckx is a referee in Belgium.

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