Seeing Red

by Graham Poll

  Robbie’s team, Leicester City, were already doomed to relegation from the Premiership. This was their penultimate game at their old Filbert Street stadium where they were playing Aston Villa. I had finished my warm-up and so had the players. It was the final period before we all went out again for the match. Suddenly, Savage burst into the officials’ dressing room. I asked him to leave but he said, ‘I’ve got to use your loo. I’m busting for a shit.’ With that, he went into our toilet, sat down and, with the door wide open, he gave a running commentary as he defecated.

  We could not believe what was happening. I saw his teammate Matt Elliott in the corridor and asked, ‘Are the toilets in your dressing room working okay?’ He thought it was a weird question but confirmed that the plumbing was functioning normally.

  While Robbie was in the cubicle, Dennis Hedges, the match observer, entered the dressing room and according to Robbie’s account of events I said, ‘You’ll never guess who is in our loo’ as if it was all a hoot. I might well have said that, but if I did so, it was in appalled astonishment and when Robbie finished, I told him his behaviour was unacceptable. He laughed and said, ‘I’ll leave it floating so you can see it for yourself.’ And he did.

  Now I was almost lost for words but managed to remark that he should at least consider washing his hands. He replied, ‘No need.’ With that, he turned to Dennis Hedges and wiped his hands down the lapels of Dennis’s jacket. He said, ‘Mr Hedges won’t mind. He can take a joke.’

  Now, I am not a prude. I have spent a lot of time in football and around footballers. I am used to language and behaviour which, in other walks of life, would be considered crude. They don’t bother me at all, normally, but Robbie Savage’s behaviour was just horrible. I wouldn’t report a player for using my loo but the moment Robbie wiped his hands down Dennis’s jacket meant that he was being deeply disrespectful.

  At the subsequent disciplinary hearing, he maintained that he had an upset stomach. But the Leicester dressing room was less than twenty yards away from ours. Was what he did an attempt at a joke, as he has always maintained? Was it an attempt to belittle me or destabilize me before the game? I don’t know, but I knew I had to report him.

  After the match, Micky Adams, the Leicester assistant manager at the time, spoke to me about an incident on the pitch. I told him about what Robbie had done and that I was reporting it. Adams apologized and promised action would be taken against the player. Four days later, Leicester announced that they had fined Robbie two weeks’ wages, the maximum financial penalty they could impose.

  The FA charged Robbie with improper conduct. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, represented him at the hearing and said the matter should have been dealt with in a more sympathetic, less official way. He added that it was common for players not to wash their hands after using the toilet before games, because they are so focused on the football.

  Robbie produced a doctor’s certificate to prove he was on antibiotics at the time of the game, and said he had been overwhelmed by his upset stomach. He conceded, however, that he had managed to play a full ninety minutes and then attend a supporters’ club function, but did not seem to notice any inconsistencies in that account. He also said that the mood in my dressing room during his visit was jovial and that I could not have been offended because I had demonstrated a friendly attitude to him during the game. My answer was that, as a professional, I did not let any misconduct before the game affect how I approached a player during the match.

  Finally, Barry Bright, chairman of the hearing, asked the player, ‘Do you understand you have been charged with improper conduct? You may want to consult with Mr Taylor before answering this but, having heard all of the evidence and understanding the regulations involved, do you think there is anything you did which could be interpreted as improper?’

  Savage replied immediately, without consulting Gordon Taylor, ‘Yes.’ With that, although he didn’t understand, Robbie had made the entire hearing pointless. He’d admitted his guilt. If he’d done it in a letter, he could have saved all our time. But then paperwork was not his strong point. He was fined £10,000, subsequently appealed but lost and eventually paid up. I believe he successfully appealed against Leicester’s club fine, however, and I know that he considered it a bit of fun and still feels hard done by over the incident.

  There is another tale to tell about Robbie Savage and this is an appropriate moment to do so. At the end of the 2002/03 season, West Ham went to Birmingham fighting for their Premiership lives. Robbie had moved on to Birmingham and before the game I chatted to him in an effort to let him know that what had happened at Leicester was in the past and we must move on. He felt the only reason the FA charged him was because of the involvement of the assessor, Dennis Hedges. Robbie thought I should have, ‘stood up to the assessor’ about the toilet incident. I was disappointed that he still could not see that what he had done was abominable.

  And, during that game against West Ham, I was disappointed again by Mr Savage. He had been in the Leicester side that had suffered relegation and so knew what an empty feeling that is for players and yet he revelled in West Ham’s plight. When Birmingham took the lead, he leaned over a West Ham player who was on the floor and said, with real venom, ‘Now you’re going down.’ What a nasty thing to say and do. I cautioned Savage for adopting an aggressive attitude towards an opponent and he told me I was only doing it because of the past.

  When I bumped into him after the game, he asked me why he’d been cautioned. He said, ‘I didn’t use foul language. It was just a laugh. People misunderstand me.’ I explained why I had booked him, but changed the subject and he gave me a bit of banter about my clothes. He was wearing a long, lightcoloured coat which was covered in creases.

  I said, ‘How can you give me stick when you’ve got this bit of creased old cloth?’ And I put my hand on the shoulder of the offending garment.

  At that moment, Steve Bruce, the Birmingham manager, appeared from round a corner and said, ‘I saw that, Pollie, You’ve wiped your hand on my player’s jacket.’ It was a reference to what Savage had done to the assessor’s jacket and, to my mind, it was a lot funnier than any of his player’s gags or stunts.

  I had one more laugh at Robbie Savage’s expense during my career. He had fouled someone, and when I was dealing with him, I said that I was in charge of the game, not him. He said, ‘Yeah, but I’ve got more money than you.’ After a pause, he added, ‘Loads more money.’

  Towards the end of the match Savage asked how much time was left to play. I said, ‘Sorry Robbie, I can only afford a cheap watch and it’s broken.’

  After Robbie’s attempt at toilet humour, season 2001/02, my first as a professional, ended for me at Manchester United versus Charlton. I stayed the night before the game with the assistants and fourth official at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester and we went to breakfast in our tracksuits. An American guest told us we ‘looked sporty’. We fell into conversation. He said, ‘I am here for the United game. Can you tell me what time it starts?’

  I said, ‘When I blow my whistle. I am the referee.’

  He said, ‘If you are the referee, I’m the King of Spain.’

  After the match, Julia and the children joined me at the hotel and we bumped into the same guest. I resisted the temptation to address him as ‘Your Majesty’, but he said he felt ‘a Goddam fool’. He had not thought much of the game, which had been goalless, but I enjoyed myself because the Poll family made a weekend of it and stayed in the Lake District. It was good to have some time with them, because the World Cup was looming.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sleepless in Japan

  So we have arrived at my story of the 2002 World Cup. I learned that I was going in January in a telephone call from a journalist, Christopher Davies. He was disappointed that I had not rung him to tip him off – but I hadn’t heard. He had spotted it on the FIFA website. I ran to my computer, waited for what seemed like eons for
it to boot up, found the site … and, sure enough, there it was: the official list of thirty-six referees and thirty-six assistants for the World Cup. Five referees came from the South American confederation and five from CONCACAF (North and Central America, plus the Caribbean). Africa and Asia provided five each. There was just one, my Aussie friend Mark Shield, from Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands). The rest – fourteen referees – came from Europe. On the official announcement, the European contingent was named first and listed in alphabetical order. And so the first name on the entire document was ‘Pierluigi Collina (ITA)’.

  Already, you can see the seeds of resentment and jealousy. Not towards Pierluigi – the whole world knew he was the best – but the other confederations resented the overwhelming influence and success of UEFA. That was particularly true of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol.

  None of that concerned me. What mattered to me was name number eleven on the list: ‘Graham Poll (ENG)’. People say moments like that are the realization of a dream, but that does not capture how I felt. This was something I had not dared dream about when I started refereeing; an achievement way beyond anything I had contemplated. It was the seventeenth World Cup, but the first outside Europe or the Americas, the first in Asia and the first to be jointly hosted by two countries – and I was going.

  The kid from Stevenage, who had been so insecure at school that he had been the class clown, had worked his way up the refereeing ladder and gained recognition in his own country. He had gone on to become recognized as a top official within Europe. Now, that page on the FIFA website meant that he was one of the top referees in the world.

  I know good old Freddie Reid had told me, back in 1985, always to keep my feet on the ground, and his wife had said I should retain my metaphorical cloth cap. Well, sorry Mr and Mrs Reid, at that moment in my study in Tring, if I’d had any sort of hat on I’d have chucked it in the air. And feet on the ground? No, I was flying.

  The next few days were a wonderful time of celebrations with friends and especially with my family – my mum and dad and Julia, who had shared so much of my career, and my lovely kids, who were just happy their dad was pleased.

  In March, the World Cup referees – and I never tired of reading that phrase – went out to Seoul, in South Korea, for a week on a course. It was like nowhere I had ever been before. Of course, the Koreans do not use our alphabet but, unlike the Japanese, they do not have any signs for shop names which are at all comprehensible to Westerners. When I walked around I could not understand a single word. And, I have to admit, I inspected every morsel of every meal because I didn’t know what any of it was and did not want to eat dog. If that is ignorant, then I am sorry, but I was entirely ignorant. I was in a completely different environment and culture to anything I had ever experienced.

  It was a great week, however. It began with a speech by George Cumming, the Scot who was FIFA’s director of refereeing. He sat us down and said, ‘Summa Petenda – aim for the highest. One of you thirty-six here will referee the World Cup Final.’ As I have already recalled, most of us looked at Pierluigi Collina.

  During that week in Seoul, our sleep patterns were all over the place and I taught some of the others an English word, ‘knackered’. When I got home, UEFA rewarded my selection for the World Cup by awarding me with the UEFA Cup semifinal second leg between AC Milan and Borussia Dortmund in the San Siro Stadium – a ground I had always wanted to add to my list. Marvellous.

  Then I received an email saying that the referee appointed for the first leg could not do it, so I was being switched. Instead of the second leg, I was now due to officiate at the first leg, in Dortmund. Milan played dreadfully, Dortmund played exceptionally and the Germans won 4–0. So I thought, ‘Now the second leg will be a non-event, and so I have been lucky.’

  It seemed to me that everything was going really well. Robbie Savage did his best to ruin my mood, but not even that disgusting episode quite managed it. Graham Poll (ENG) was going to the World Cup.

  The seventy-two officials flew out two weeks before the tournament. We assembled in the same, massive city centre hotel which we had used for the course in March. The police closed the motorway for us every day when our coach carried us to a huge stadium for our training and there was a real sense of occasion and importance. We had fitness tests and some team-bonding and then the early appointments were announced.

  We congregated in a big room and the appointments were projected onto a screen. By that quirk of the senses that occurs on occasions like that, I spotted my name immediately. I was down to referee Russia against Japan. But within seconds, the projector was turned off, the acetate sheet was taken away and hurried consultations took place while the refs sat around wondering what was going on. I subsequently discovered that because of my adventure in Slovenia, the Russian representative had objected to me. Eventually we were told to go to dinner and when we returned two hours later to see the appointments again, I had been reassigned to Italy versus Croatia.

  As I now know, that game did not go well. So the badly-awarded penalty in Slovenia really did cost me. If I had not given that penalty, the Slovenia match would have passed without incident and I would have begun World Cup 2002 by refereeing Russia against Japan instead of Italy versus Croatia. Who knows how events might have unfolded subsequently? It is possible that Russia–Japan would have gone well and I would have had a successful World Cup. That would have made it impossible for me to be kept away from Euro 2004.

  When God made us, he only gave us eyes in the front of our head. We can only look forwards. And so I completely accept that there is no point in saying, ‘What if …?’ No point at all … but then again, what if?

  Anyway, the reassigned appointments were announced in that room in Seoul. Half the officials were staying there in South Korea but I was in the contingent flying to Tokyo, Japan. As soon as we landed, we were taken to the imperial palace to meet the crown prince. He believed it was an honour for him and his country to be our hosts and that attitude characterized the entire World Cup.

  After trying to avoid eating dog, and so consuming nothing much other than boiled rice for a week, I had lost weight and was starving. At the palace in Tokyo, there was a huge buffet laid out and Peter Prendergast, a referee from Jamaica with whom I had become friendly, cajoled me to start being a little more adventurous and to actually try various foodstuffs. I had just persuaded myself to put a portion of raw jellyfish in my mouth when I heard a perfect, clipped, Oxbridge English accent enunciate, ‘Where is this English referee I would like to meet?’ It was the crown prince. So I gulped down the jellyfish – which was probably the best way to deal with it – and shook hands with the prince.

  The reason we had gone straight to the reception became apparent when we left – and made the two-hour journey to the referees’ base which was in the middle of the countryside. In Korea we had been able to walk out into shopping areas or get a free bus to other areas of the city. We were in the middle of bustling city life. In Japan we were in the middle of nowhere. But we were there together and I made some really solid friendships.

  I was lucky enough to be a spectator when England played their opening game, a 1–1 draw against Sweden in Saitama – and I do mean lucky. The nation was watching at home, half way around the world, but I was there. All the referees who were not involved elsewhere were given tickets for the England game, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘I am watching England in the World Cup!’ It was extraordinary to see so many Japanese people, who had ‘adopted’ England as their team, wearing England shirts with either of ‘Beckham’ or ‘Owen’ on the back.

  My first appointment was two days later in the same stadium – as fourth official for Japan’s first match, against Belgium. The stadium was built especially for the World Cup and had been open less than a year. It held 63,000 and because of the home country’s involvement, most of them had Japanese shirts or flags. The atmosphere was tremendous, although somehow it was complete
ly unlike a British crowd. All the goals came in the second half. Japan fell behind, equalized and then grabbed the lead before conceding a goal sixteen minutes from the end. It finished 2–2.

  On the Thursday, two days before I was due to have my first ‘middle’, I sent this email home to friends and family:

  I hope you are well and enjoying this wonderful World Cup tournament at least half as much as I am. First the most important news … my weight! Things have settled down at my usual fighting weight.

  Yesterday evening I went to the Germany–Ireland game which was very exciting and nice to see a team giving everything after England’s poor showing in the second half against Sweden. What about tomorrow night? Can England do it against Argentina? Of course not, but it’s good to dream isn’t it?

  I am sitting in Collina’s room using his PC to type this message as he’s in Sapporo for the England game. I have promised him a nasty surprise in his room if I’m not pleased with his performance. My first involvement here passed without incident in what was one of the best games so far … fourth official at Japan v Belgium. A fantastic second half.

  Tomorrow I leave for Ibaraki for my game and was really impressed with the stadium when watching the Irish match. Having been here for two weeks, I am pleased to be able to get my whistle out and pleased that there has been no pressure applied as to how we are to referee. Just express yourselves and give clear decisions is the message.

  Given this and my preparations I am quietly confident for Saturday evening.

  Regards, Pollie.

  When I re-read that, I can recapture the feelings I had of excitement and anticipation. I was thrilled to be a part of the World Cup. After twenty-two years of refereeing, I had climbed the ladder from taking charge of Woolmer Green Rangers Reserves and here I was making myself at home in Pierluigi Collina’s room, for heaven’s sake! And I was looking forward my own first game. ‘Quietly confident’. Yep, that summed up how I felt.