Thursday, August 03, 2006

Its a friendly for gawds sake


I attended my 1st FC reserve game last night. Couldn't get to any of the others due to being away, or clashing with the 1st team. I enjoyed it, was a decent game, FC were 2 up at half time against a Unibond team with most of its 1st team playing. They lost 3-2 in the end, was unlucky, but there were mitigating circumstances.
You see FC played most of the 2nd half with 10 men, and finished with 9. Not a dirty game, so nowt to do with red cards, but all to do, in my humble view, with the referee. Being an ex member of the refs union, I don't like to overly criticise, its not an easy thing to do, thankless at times, but some refs just don't help themselves.
What happened was, at half time, the FC ressies boss, the esteemed Mr Tony Cullen, made a number of changes and brought all the subs on. About 15 mins into the 2nd period, one of the FC players hurt himself, and couldn't continue. No problem there, its a friendly, so easily solved. No 9 Gary Edwards re-appeared and took his place up front.
But alas, the ref didn't like this, stopped the game, approached the esteemed Mr Cullen and during a debate (which thankfully for the ref didn't get too heated), the ref, I presume, informed them that Edwards had to come off.
So, the injured player returns to the frey, only to have to come back off as he can hardly walk. At this point Margy, who is watching from the stands, comes onto the pitch to speak to the ref. Still the 10 men play on. During the 2nd half, another player has to come off, FC end the game with 9
A farce.
Now surely all the ref had to do, was agree pre game about roll on roll off subs. If he didn't do that, common sense should have prevailed and he asked the Warrington Town bench if they were ok with Edwards coming back on, I am sure given it was only a friendly, that it would have been, but no, we play on with 10 men. If it was the World Cup final then ok no probs, but a Unibond Div 1 team verses a NWCL Reserves Div 2 team, come on ref, do us all a favour, apply a little common sense to the proceedings.
End of the day, we paid 6 notes to get in, we want to see a fair game.

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