I can distinctly remember driving home from work on Friday thinking it had been a long hard week at work and I needed a relaxing break. The weekend flew by and I am now more tired than I was when I finished work on Friday. I had a great weekend, it could have been a lot better, but that wasn’t my fault. I gave it my all, I was unfortunately let down by other people.
The excitement started as it usually does at the weekend, at Boundary Park home of the greatest football team in the world (to me anyway). As I walked to the ground pushed on by the famous Oldham weather with my cousin Stevie there was a buzz of excitement in the misty cold grey air. Unusually though team tactics and football talk wasn’t the only topic of conversation. My cousin had organized a Christmas karaoke party for the Saturday night and we chatted about song choices, Auntie Barbara’s potato pie, Stevie’s chicken curry and vodka jelly babies. Being diabetic I am sure that vodka jelly babies should be avoided but after the way Oldham played I felt I deserved a treat.
So on to the game, I honestly thought it would be an easy victory. Sorry Stevie, you did warn me that thinking like that is very dangerous. I was that confident I placed a cheeky £2 bet on Oldham winning 3 – 0 and Lee Hughes being the first scorer. I placed my betting slip into my top pocket and zipped it so it wouldn’t fall out when Hughesy scored. The man next to me laughed and said you got the score right, but Liddell will score first with a penalty. He was even more confident than I was as he placed £10 on at 70 – 1 odds. The credit crunch doesn’t exist in Oldham…yet.
I’m not going to write a review of the match as I don’t want to step on Mr Vose’s toes. To cut a long story short the betting slip was in pieces after 35 minutes follwed by my hopes for three points when the final whistle blew.
The thing that angered me more than anything about the match and angers me most matches was the officials. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of referees performances that I have seen over the last 5 years as a football fan that would count as a anything near half decent. This isn’t just sour grapes, I promise. The ref made a terrible decision and awarded the opposition a penalty which put simply wasn’t. In doing so he actually made the game a draw which was the fairest result as Oldham had a bad day and Leyton Orient looked a half decent side, particularly in the second half.
I cannot understand how the FA and these incompetent referees have got away with it so long. They just aren’t good enough and make mistakes on a weekly basis. They are managing to do all this at the heart of a multi million pound business. Which is another problem, football is now a business and not a sport. It costs a small fortune to go to a football game nowadays even at lower league level.
Which brings me on to respect. This new respect campaign brought in by the FA is out of order. Rather than getting their own house in order, they spend millions of pounds on a marketing campaign to tell the people, who if it wasn't for them they wouldn't have a job to 'respect' them. I cannot respect somebody who gets things so wrong so regularly, sorry. I can see things that they miss sitting 70 yards away from where they are stood. That isn't just getting things wrong it is incompetence, they don't even know the rules. When the referees make these mistakes, do they ever apologize to the fans or players? No, because they uphold the law and their decision is final.
Just this weekend an Arsenal player was sent off and he didn't deserve to. When the Arsenal manager who usually doesn't see these incidents (he has the eyesight of a fighter pilot but doesn't like to admit it) complained to the fourth official. The fourth official just waved him away with total contempt, he didn't even have the courtesy to look him in the eye, he just turned his back on him and waved him away. Now that to me says I know me friend in the middle got it wrong, so I don't want to speak to you. Where is the respect in that? Respect it appears is a thing to be given to match day officials but not to be given back.
I'm beginning to get worked up now so I'm going to stop. I'll probably continue this theme most weekends, as most of my weekends end up being ruined by referees. I haven't even talked about the karaoke night and the ice hockey after my rant. At least I've got something to talk about tomorrow now. I'm going for a lie down to clam down now.
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