Todays referee

The thing is though, where do you stop? Agree that officials shouldn't officiate their own teams but on any given day there are permutations that effect just about every other club in the division. So if you haul off every official that has some connection with another club, will we have enough officials to play all the games?

Back in the day we had three young lads come over from Wallsend, one was Peter Beardsley, one was Neil McDonald, the other, whose name escapes me, didn't get to play in our first team and later went to be a ref in the lower Leagues, he reffed us a few times in the Conference year. He was chosen to ref the second leg of the semi-final v Aldershot but because some of the Aldershot fans found out and complained he was dropped. The sad thing was, that to go up to ref in the league he had to have reffed a semi-final or final in the conference and because of his age that was the last year he could do it, so he never got his chance to ref in the League.

He may have favoured us, he may have hated us for letting him go. I always thought it very harsh, like trusting him to be an official and be honest but only some of the time.