As I was sitting overlooking the turquoise sea at Lakka in Paxos, it suddenly came to me - he's not going to disappear quietly into the sunset. The "he" in question is Mr Graham Poll, allegedly the Asian underground bookmaker's favourite English referee. His publicity campaign relating to his "retirement" indicated the end of a road - not everyone believes him.
The man's publicity overkill is linked to his forthcoming autobiography (can't wait to see his explanations of the type "I was unable to give the penalty due to conspicuous betting patterns in Macau") plus the fly-on-the-wall documentary for the BBC and his appearance on the same channel's Inside Sport programme next week.
Being on holiday, I have only skimmed the surface of the excessive column inches that have been provided to the Thing from Tring to put out a whole load of fallacious claptrap. Among the gems that I have gleaned while reclining on the beach are the following.
* Poll claims that he received no backing from the FA over his officiating of the Tottenham versus Chelsea fracas which was the straw that broke the camel's back and led to the initiation of the blog that you are now reading. Poll apparently informed the Chelsea players that they "needed to be taught a lesson". How could he expect the FA and Brian Barwick to support his corrupted ego when the statement was overheard by several players and, more importantly, when neither the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) nor the assistant refs and the fourth official have been willing to come forward and support him despite his comments being on open mike access to the refereeing team?
* Poll seems to think that we should all be downcast at his supposed retirement. Not so. Statements like "I'm the most experienced referee they have and yet my credibility no longer holds" and "this is me being abused again and again and again" and, following the Barwick conversation, "at that point he was saying goodbye to my career" are indicative of a startling degree of egotism. Firstly, who cares what Poll thinks? And, secondly, he destroyed his own career by his comedy officiating of Croatia and Australia in the World Cup.
* Poll claims that the FA have been "eroding the power of the referee for years" and his nonsense is supported by an unnamed former official who states "...referees have lost some of their authority. I don't think there is any doubt about that". The self inflicted wounds of the match manipulators do not warrant our pity. If certain referees hadn't aligned their officiating to specific betting market patterns, there would be no uproar from players, managers nor, indeed, market analysts. Poll is by no means the only European official who chooses entertaining reasoning behind his match decision making but most of the others have the sense to remain quiet and continue with the job in hand.
* Poll reckons that referees are "losing the war" against badly behaved managers whereas, from our position, it would seem more applicable to be concerned about football losing the war to the betting markets.
All the usual suspects plus some new talking heads have insisted on putting their side of the story from Frank Clark of the League Managers Association who has voiced disappointment over Poll's pithy publicity "we've worked hard to establish some lines of communication between managers and referees" to Neale Barry (the FA's Head of Senior Referee Development) who is so correct in his assertion that "there has never been a better time to be a referee" - we're certainly not aware of offshore bank accounts for officials having been around, say, twenty years ago!
The PGMOB are particularly irked as Hackett's lot would prefer the bastards in the black to remain off radar and there must be a collective concern within his organisation that Poll's degree of loose cannonness might lead to something really destabilising hitting the newsstands.
We choose to finish this post with three statements regarding the broad subject area on view here.
Firstly, Kevin McCarra of The Guardian about Poll "this is egotism poorly disguised as altruism. Perhaps Poll does worry about those 27000 people (the other English referees) but the main achievement has been to draw yet more attention to himself". Too true, mate...
Secondly, Blaz Sliskovic, the coach of Bosnia Herzogovina side Zrinjski, blurts "referees are sold as whores, journalists write what they are told and betting offices rule our football" which would be of equal validity and relevance if proclaimed by any Premiership manager.
Thirdly, our Trading Team's maths man would like you to consider this "Poll is a self-publicist who is effectively untouchable and regression analysis of his refereeing is suggestive of links to some rather inappropriate fringe areas in the footballing world"
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
