Wonderful example of the abysmal current standard of officiating and inconsistency in this afternoon's mackemfest at the SoL. I watched it on cable at the local rub-a-dub-dub - glutton for punishment.

Gary McAllister is clean through in the inside right chanel chased by Lurch Varga - who brings him down about 2ft outside the box. Referee, Graham Barber, points to the spot and is assailed by barbers poles. So, he finally goes over to the Linesman who by this time has Hutchinson screaming in his face. After consulting with the Linesman, who must have been generally in line with the play, he points again at the spot. What does he do with Lurch - who has clearly denied McAllister a goal-scoring opportunity without any other player covering? Send him off? Take the soft option and book him? Nope - he does....nothing, other than book SK for excessive whinging!!!

A hopelessly incorrect decision taken by both Officials in consultation, which costs the mackems two points they deserved, but Barber then compounds the felony by completely ignoring the prescribed punishment for denying a player a clear goal-scoring opportunity. Unbelievably inept officiating.

I'm coming round to believing we need to move towards video evidence in situations like this to ensure horribly incorrect decisions are avoided - the game was stopped for 2-3 minutes while it was all sorted out anyway, so it couldn't have been disrupted any more by requesting the video replay which showed quite clearly that the tackle was outside the box. In refusing to send Varga off, I'm sure the Referee was not 100% certain the tackle as in or out.

-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001

Answers

I understand where you are coming from on this one Clarky, but as it again involves the Makems, I still find myself coming down on the side of the referee.

I reckon they should instruct all referee's who go to Le Stade de Merde to change their name to Graham.....Barber today, Poll against Newton Heath.....they must hate that name.

-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001

Hmmm...do I see new aliases for you, ITK? 'Graham'? 'Barber Poll'? ;-)

-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001

I'm probably being very patronising Ciara, but as an American you my not understand the irony.

In ages past, although there are still some around, barbers (men's hairdressers) advertised their whereabouts by displaying a red and white striped pole outside the shop. Hence the fact that as well as being called Makems, the strip adorned braindead sub-humans from down the road are often refered to as "The Barbers Poles" - that will now have to be changed to "Barbers Polls"

As I said, probably very patronising, and if that's the case then I apologise.

-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001

Apology accepted. ;-)

That's precisely why I said "Barber Poll". We have em over here too. ;-)

-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001

After watching the game again on MOTD, I've changed my mind about the mackems deserving all three points - Fowler's disallowed goal was incorrectly ruled offside.

However, this further error - made by the same Linesman - simply reinforces my point about standards.

A further thought - does anyone actually assess the perforance of these blerks? That Linesman made two crucial errors in the same game that were pivotal to the result.
Unfortunately, I can't see video replays being used for offside decisions - there are way too many and that would slow down the game too much. However, the situation could be improved by Linesman simply being instructed to only flag for clear offside situations and to ignore anything marginal - which under the present laws, stating that a player who is 'level' is 'onside', should be the case anyway.

-- Anonymous, February 11, 2001

Traitor Hutchison. That's all I can say about that whole game. Most Toon fans would eat their own intestines rather than paly for that lot, but to hug them when he scores....made me feel physically ill.

-- Anonymous, February 11, 2001

If you didn't already see it in last Sunday's Times, nufc.com have a link to the ST interview with Lee Clark. It's in their Charlton preview. He said he probably would have left Sunderland anyway if it hadn't been for the t-shirt incident because he just couldn't see himself playing against us while wearing a their shirt.

-- Anonymous, February 11, 2001