Ref-ing Hell

[Carlin]

Its not just sour grapes beacuse we've lost 3. But the standard of ref's has been pretty poor the last 5 or 6 games. I have'nt travelled away lately but what i've heard of other fans is that the officals have ethier missed or bottled big decisons. In the Belper ,and Lougthboro games the ref was happy to let there centre backs "do a job on Ben". Then Brendan was lucky not to get his leg broke against Dynamo from a distgusting challenge which went unpunished, and to befair Brendan got away lightly for retaliation. Thats just a couple off the top of my head. Would you say its just been unfortunate or are the officals to soft at this level. I'm not 1 for wraping up players in cotton wool but it does seem that rules of the modern game are are being ignored

[swipey]

I'm one of the first to sympathise with refs - they've got a difficult job, can't please everyone and the officials at Evo-Stik level are no Howard Webbs; however, they get paid to do a job and that's what went through my mind after the second shin-level two footed off-the-ground challenge from NV last weekend - everyone in the ground saw it, play went on and we expected the ref to at least blow up for it.
When he didn't and play went on, I thought summat might be done when the ball went out of play. It didn't, and I'm still disgusted by it. The ref told our Chairman in the bar after he had an awful game which was good of him to say so but the challenges I saw could have ended players' careers.
S'pose it was funny seeing a fat pee'd-up Brummie running to the front of the terraces at NW after a diabolical challenge or two but the refs are there to do a job, and they simply aren't. It's not a vendetta against HTFC, far from it but there are obvious howlers that refs simply aren't seeing or taking action upon.

Adding to Carlin's comment that the players shouldn't be wrapped in cotton wool: it's a good comment but I digress slightly that they should be protected to a degree from Hong Kong Fuey tackles that make a mockery of the grass-roots level game - especially when they go unpunished.

I'd like to get dutchref's perspective on this because the obvious counter is that the refs should be protected too but after spending half an hour with dutchref last year for the first half of a home game the things he were pointing out about the officials' mistakes were concerning.

Maybe we're just having a vent because we've lost a few games but if it carries on I wonder what the league/FA can do about it; early days yet.

Let's see how the next few games go