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#Post#: 106535--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: bmb
Date: May 23, 2026, 10:22 am
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Personally I think people get too hung up on errors and/or
perceived errors and forget the 300+ correct decisions in a
game. Read any discussions on here about a "controversial"
decision and there are some agreeing with the decision, others
who don't. As referee's ourselves we do tend to argue the
wording and implementation of the LOTG more than those outside
of the referee community and in the main very valid points are
made for both sides. It is very rare where all posters on here
agree on any given controversial call one way or the other just
as you would expect from subjective decisions. Just because I
(or any of us) don't agree with a particular decision, that is
subjective in nature, it doesn't make me (us) right and the
referee wrong and nor does it make me (us) wrong and the referee
right, it simply means we see it a different way down to our own
tolerance levels, club bias, how much we like or dislike the
referee involved and our interpretation of the LOTG - only 1
person however sees the incident from the referees perspective
and that is the referee themselves, the rest of us rely on our
view from the stands or the far too many TV replays that give us
much better views than the referee will have had. We are as much
as fallible to the non refereeing community in thinking referees
should have 100% accuracy - it is humanly impossible, even worse
as we should understand far better how very different things
look from that split second view on the pitch.
If we were to compare referee error to player error I personally
liken referee error to that of a goal keeper, there's likely to
be a much lower % but they tend to be costly and game changing.
Familiarity is a double edged sword imo, on the plus side a
referee who knows teams well understand their patterns of play,
know instinctively their set up for corners/free kicks etc and
read the game really well as a consequence, on the flip side the
more popular view of it breeding contempt as the saying goes.
I think the days of going back to a singular pool of referees
are long gone. There's not enough money in the game, for
investing in refereeing at least, to be able to put all referees
on 'expensive' contracts for a start and the reality is there's
a far fewer number who are capable of refereeing in the top
flight where every game is resting on millions. Throw in the all
too important contract and employment law and I'm glad I'm not
the one who has to sort the mess out!! Contacts have to allow
for demotion in cases of continued and prolonged poor
performance but how are you going to persuade people to leave
secure jobs to sign such a contact that will give them less job
security?
#Post#: 106552--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: Lanyardhater
Date: May 23, 2026, 5:46 pm
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bmb you’ve written a very good piece but I must disagree with
two things you’ve said.
1. “There’s not enough money in the game . . .”
There’s a king’s random sloshing around in football,
eye-watering amounts - but it’s not all going to the right
places. If I may go off at a tangent for a moment, it’s the
same answer I got from the FA when I asked why Level 3/4/5
referees were still wearing black even when one team was in very
dark blue and why didn’t they give them all a complete set of
coloured shirts (including of course that absolutely fabulous
fluorescent yellow - has my membership of RTR now come to a
premature end?). Seriously, under poor midweek lighting, I have
actually seen the ball passed to the ref by a player who, out of
the corner of his eye, mistook him for a colleague. But
“there’s not enough money” to prevent such a farcical
occurrence.
Back to topic:
2. “. . .there’s a far fewer number who are capable of
refereeing in the top flight where every game is resting on
millions”
How do you know they’re not capable unless you give them a
chance? And without the glare of scrutiny that inevitably comes
when clubs and fans think they’ve been given a second string
official because that’s how the refereeing authorities
themselves have labelled them. Drop the demarcation!
#Post#: 106553--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: rustyref
Date: May 23, 2026, 6:19 pm
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--- Quote from: Lanyardhater link ---
>
> bmb you’ve written a very good piece but I must disagree with
two things you’ve said.
>
> 1. “There’s not enough money in the game . . .”
>
> There’s a king’s random sloshing around in football,
eye-watering amounts - but it’s not all going to the right
places. If I may go off at a tangent for a moment, it’s the
same answer I got from the FA when I asked why Level 3/4/5
referees were still wearing black even when one team was in very
dark blue and why didn’t they give them all a complete set of
coloured shirts (including of course that absolutely fabulous
fluorescent yellow - has my membership of RTR now come to a
premature end?). Seriously, under poor midweek lighting, I have
actually seen the ball passed to the ref by a player who, out of
the corner of his eye, mistook him for a colleague. But
“there’s not enough money” to prevent such a farcical
occurrence.
>
> Back to topic:
>
> 2. “. . .there’s a far fewer number who are capable of
refereeing in the top flight where every game is resting on
millions”
>
> How do you know they’re not capable unless you give them a
chance? And without the glare of scrutiny that inevitably comes
when clubs and fans think they’ve been given a second string
official because that’s how the refereeing authorities
themselves have labelled them. Drop the demarcation!
>
--- End Quote ---
It is pretty obvious they aren't good enough. I won't list them
again but there are lots of referees that have been SG2 for a
long time and not had a sniff of an EPL game. This isn't a
criticism of them, but if you've spent 10 years in SG2 and not
got a Premier League game it is pretty obvious you are deemed to
be not good enough.
#Post#: 106554--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: bmb
Date: May 23, 2026, 6:45 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Lanyardhater link ---
>
> bmb you’ve written a very good piece but I must disagree with
two things you’ve said.
>
> 1. “There’s not enough money in the game . . .”
>
--- End Quote ---
What I actually said was
--- Quote from: bmb link ---
> There's not enough money in the game, for investing in
refereeing at least,
>
--- End Quote ---
I know the game is awash with money but there's very little
invested in refereeing. Nowhere near enough - like you say
referees at Level 3/4/5 referees still wearing black. If teams
are allowed to wear dark colours then referees should have all
kits provided to them to stop the clashes. No-one however bad
they are deserves to wear the vile rag though!
#Post#: 106580--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: mac
Date: May 24, 2026, 8:32 am
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Well you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head. People need to
decide what they want. Do they want refereeing to be better, or
do they want refereeing to be cheap? It can’t be both.
#Post#: 106607--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: ajb95
Date: May 24, 2026, 12:36 pm
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--- Quote from: bmb link ---
>
> [quote author=Lanyardhater link=topic=8059.msg106552#msg106552
date=1779576413]
> bmb you’ve written a very good piece but I must disagree with
two things you’ve said.
>
> 1. “There’s not enough money in the game . . .”
>
--- End Quote ---
What I actually said was
--- Quote from: bmb link ---
> There's not enough money in the game, for investing in
refereeing at least,
>
--- End Quote ---
I know the game is awash with money but there's very little
invested in refereeing. Nowhere near enough - like you say
referees at Level 3/4/5 referees still wearing black. If teams
are allowed to wear dark colours then referees should have all
kits provided to them to stop the clashes. No-one however bad
they are deserves to wear the vile rag though!
[/quote]
Or you ban clubs from wearing black so refs can wear black as
they have done since day .
#Post#: 106618--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: doowe
Date: May 24, 2026, 3:46 pm
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--- Quote from: mac link ---
>
> Well you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head. People need to
decide what they want. Do they want refereeing to be better, or
do they want refereeing to be cheap? It can’t be both.
>
--- End Quote ---
Not sure aboUt that! George Courtney was appointed to the
Supplementary list in 1973, the full list in 1974 and was
wearing a FIFA badge in 1977. He wouldn’t have a chance of that
under PGMOL, and refereeing was certainly done on the cheap,
relative to today.
#Post#: 106626--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: mac
Date: May 25, 2026, 2:48 am
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Yes but tickets were a shilling or something and million pound
players would have been laughed at. Let’s be realistic. We could
go back to club marks if that’s the system you want.
Now you literally have to have billionaire owners to compete in
premier league football so compare like for like.
Someone made the comment there isn’t enough money available in
football for referee development to do whatever someone else
suggested. There is, it’s just how much the clubs want to help
improve refereeing by releasing funds.
#Post#: 106631--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: Blind Referee
Date: May 25, 2026, 4:58 am
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There’s more money invested in refereeing now than there has
ever been - absolutely huge sums - think PGMO has an annual
spend of around £25m-£30m now - massive sums compared to just 10
years ago - the idea that refereeing is underfunded is absurd -
more money is spent on refereeing in England than anywhere else
in the world
The issue is how that money is how and where that money is spent
- most of the coaches involved at Select group, Football League
and FA Core have been involved in their roles for a number of
years without any noticeable improvement in standard / returns
on investment for the sums spent - thats the number one issue
and why the “informed” members of this forum are quite rightly
concerned - its not that refereeing standards have got worse,
its the fact that despite the huge investment they haven’t got
better
#Post#: 106647--------------------------------------------------
Re: Merging SG1 and SG2?
DIR By: Semi Retired
Date: May 25, 2026, 8:58 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Blind Referee link ---
>
> There’s more money invested in refereeing now than there has
ever been - absolutely huge sums - think PGMO has an annual
spend of around £25m-£30m now - massive sums compared to just 10
years ago - the idea that refereeing is underfunded is absurd -
more money is spent on refereeing in England than anywhere else
in the world
>
> The issue is how that money is how and where that money is
spent - most of the coaches involved at Select group, Football
League and FA Core have been involved in their roles for a
number of years without any noticeable improvement in standard /
returns on investment for the sums spent - thats the number one
issue and why the “informed” members of this forum are quite
rightly concerned - its not that refereeing standards have got
worse, its the fact that despite the huge investment they
haven’t got better
>
--- End Quote ---
But how do we define if standards are better or worse now than
they were 5 years ago?
There’s a general feeling that there’s “no improvement”, but
it’s all subjective. Yet we have easily filled our FIFA quota
now with others banging on the door, something that couldn’t be
said 10 years ago. We also have 2 officials going to the World
Cup, having provided 2 for the euros last time out.
Ok, you could argue that aside from Oliver/Taylor there’s less
talent but I’d argue that the we have quite a few officials now
who can comfortably handle “big” games; probably more so than in
previous generations which seemed more dominated by a few names.
Likewise it’s a very different sport now to 10-20 years ago.
More scrutiny, more pressure, more money in the game - and,
let’s call a spade a spade here, players who are trained to
“gain most out of tiny margins”. Not saying there never used to
be feigning but it’s far worse now than ever before at the very
top.
It’s also a faster, more technical game.
I’m not saying standards have got better or worse - I honestly
have no idea. What I can say for sure is that it’s a much
trickier game to ref now than it ever has been thanks to the
money and the media.
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