CRASH.

I normally think this writer, is a hooligan prick.
Tho' I do sometimes nod in agreement on what he has to say.

Read on: (proceed only, if you are a football fan)

There's a big, dirty question that needs to be asked about football today. It's so big and dirty that no one really wants to mention it, because it could undermine the integrity of our game. But you know me, the bigger and dirtier anything is, the better I like it. So I'm going to ask it. The irony is it's not that radical a question really, you'll have asked the same thing yourself when watching a game.
But here it is; Are some of our referees corrupt? Or at least, do they make decisions during games for reasons other than applying the rules of the game?
I have to ask because some of the decisions I've seen lately have been so astonishing that I don't believe that every poor decision is simply a mistake. At times it feels like there is something else going on. I know a lot of fans feel this way. There's only so far you can go on believing a referee is incompetent.
Let's get all the clichés out of the way. I know it's a hard job. I know they're under a lot of pressure and there's bound to be mistakes when you're making split second decisions. We all know that's true. But I'm not talking about hairs-breadth offside decisions here. I'm not interested in a few bad calls here and there. I'm talking about the big, obvious mistakes.
Here's just a few from the last week. We all know there are loads every week.
Essien's tackle. Ok this wasn't a Premiership referee but it needs addressing. Are we seriously being asked to believe none of the officials saw that? He didn't even get a yellow card. We are right to be amazed by that. Frankly, if they can't spot that, then there's little point in even having a referee. It defies credulity to think that they didn't see it. It really does. Something else was going on there. I don't know what but it wasn't right. Repka's handball. He's jumping with his arms pulled back as the ball hits him. It was obviously not deliberate, indeed it was obvious he was trying to make sure his arms were not raised in any way that could be construed as intentional hand ball. He didn't get booked for deliberate hand ball which is a bookable offence and the only reason to award a penalty for the ball hitting the hand. And yet Mike Riley booked nine players in that game, including later, Repka. Nine bookings would indicate it was a bloodbath, but it wasn't. Imagine if you'd had a bet on there being nine yellow cards in that game but no reds. You'd have got good odds on that, wouldn't you? Am I wrong to occasionally wonder about this?
McCulloch of Wigan's rugby tackle on Terry went unpunished despite being it being a foul which lasted for almost four seconds. There was nothing ambiguous about it. It was a clear penalty. He did the same thing against Ledley King when they played Spurs in full clear view of the linesman and it was just ignored.
That's beyond error or incompetence, isn't it? Something else is going on, that's the way it feels. It feels odd. I just can't believe they didn't see it. It's easier to see it than to miss it.Steve Bennett gave Chris Riggot a second yellow card for the Boro at Liverpool for a lightweight foul that simply could not be construed as a bookable offence. It was a bizarre decision. However, Sissoko made a leg breaker of a tackle on Bates but only got a yellow. That just looks like a biased decision to me. Am I wrong? Could Bennett really say one tackle was the equal of the other? Will he be asked? Nah.
The whole refereeing industry and their employers have a vested interest in not exposing any form of bias.
And knowing human nature as I do, I just don't think we should accept without question the honesty of the match officials. They're human. They're as liable as any of us to be manipulated. We need to be aware of that.
At Newcastle, Shearer's persistent and deliberate assaults on Arsenal players including a splendid but ruthless hacking tackle but it was 90 minutes before he was booked for an elbow that was more usually a red card offence.
Yes, I like my football with a tinge of violence and I thought Parkers performance put all those uncommitted, limp-wristed, wimpy footballers we see week in week out feigning injury and crying about nothing, well it put all of them to shame. But the fact that Silva got a second yellow for an innocuous tackle, after Shearer's butchery doesn't look like even-handed, fair refereeing to me by Dermot Gallagher. It looked as though he had one policy for Newcastle and another for Arsenal. Why does it look like that? I'm not imagining it am I? I did see Shearer deliberately fouling Arsenal defenders time after time didn't I? Why would Gallagher behave like that?
And its not a rare thing to see astonishing decisions in many games. Decisions that you just cannot understand how they've been made or missed. Ok, not in every game but it happens often enough. It's sometimes dismissed by the authorities as typical fan hysteria or blinkered vision when it goes against their own team - it's certainly convenient for them to think that. However, many of us have seen many years of football. We know the rules and we know how players go about breaking them. So we're well qualified to judge a dodgy decision. We can see it with our own eyes. It's right there in front of us.
We know that good old-fashioned cash bribing of refs has happened in Germany and elsewhere. Are we seriously being asked to believe it can't happen anywhere else? I find that improbable. Very improbable. A referee is in the best position to influence a games outcome. Ok, some events might be beyond the refs control but in a tight match a single decision can alter the game.
However, I personally doubt that referees are getting bags of used tenners in Watford Gap service station from shady characters. Though I would not rule it out as a possibility. It seems too crude. Too obvious.
Then you have plain and simple bias which perhaps technically isn't actual corruption but the effect of it is exactly the same. Dislike for a team, its players or manager cannot be ruled out. This manifests itself by giving the benefit of the doubt in 50/50s to the other team in all situations or by giving out yellow cards for one side and letting the other get away with the same or worse crimes.
They all deny its happening, which only makes me think its more likely to be true. It's beyond the bounds of reason to think a referee wouldn't ever be influenced by who he did or didn't like. But lets not pretend its a mistake. It's deliberate bias.
The FA is a largely unaccountable, secretive organisation that meets in private, keeps most of its officials anonymous and will not justify its own rulings. Read Simon Jordan's column in The Observer on Sunday for an illustration of just how arrogant, self important and unaccountably awful they are.
They will put their heads in the sand for as long as possible on issues like this because they know it tarnishes their product and undermines the whole integrity of the game - and more crucially makes them look like an amateur bunch of stupid old farts who get paid for doing nothing of worth and hold us, the paying public, in contempt.
The old cliché that bad decisions even themselves up over a season is just rubbish. Crucial decisions affect single games, the results of which affect all future games. History is forever altered. You can't 'even' it up at any point and its stupid to even think it could ever happen like that. We shouldn't use this notion as a way to excuse match officials for some of these radically odd decisions.
In every other walk of life we are prepared to question someone's motivation and honesty.
Footballers barely get through a single half of football without trying to cheat, but we're asked to believe refs are purer than pure. That's just unrealistic.
I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it - unless you get a photo of a ref with bag of cash being passed to him by a Far Eastern betting syndicate it’s hard to prove corruption in a game of such variables.
Some more detailed and public scrutiny of decisions would be a start, but that's not likely because when we start taking the lid off corruption in football, we might be opening up Pandora's box.
As usual football’s governing bodies require us to sit down, shut up and cough up. So let's be aware. Let's start accusing officials we think are biased on the phone-ins and in the letters pages
Let's at least put it on the radar of the FA. Let's at least try and wake them from the torpor of another free lunch at our expense.
- Jack Nicholson.

Find his penchant for VIOLENT football ( altho' its a tinge according to him) veryyyyyy disgusting.