by Graham Poll
Managers had to send their own match reports to the Premier League. Usually they harped on about one specific incident about which they felt aggrieved, but on one occasion Sir Alex made a more general point. He said of me, ‘This is supposed to be the future of English refereeing. He’s good but he makes too many mistakes.’
On yet another occasion – before the start of the second half of United’s game at Liverpool in November 2003 – United’s Rio Ferdinand asked me, ‘Are you going to give us something this half?’
I said, ‘Did the gaffer tell you to say that? You wouldn’t have thought of it yourself.’
I spotted Sir Alex Ferguson, who had overheard the exchange and had a broad grin on his face. He said, ‘Well, I’ve seen you have better halves.’
Gradually, over the course of many seasons involving many controversies, I earned the grudging respect of Sir Alex. In my last season, he was asked at a media conference about Howard Webb. Sir Alex remarked that it appeared Howard was being groomed to ‘take over’ from me as the country’s top official. He then added that, in his opinion, I had been ‘the best referee in England over the last ten years’. That short phrase is locked away in my memory banks because it meant such a lot to me.
My relationship with Arsenal had been much more fraught. I had endured problems with them ever since February 1998 when I cautioned four of their players and sent off Patrick Vieira for a second yellow card offence during the Coca Cola Cup semi-final at Chelsea. Gary Lewin, the Arsenal and England physiotherapist, came to see me after the game and told me the players were ‘confused’ over a number of my decisions.
So I contacted Arsenal a few days later to tell them I was willing to talk to the players and manager Arsène Wenger. They could raise anything they wanted about the match. But the request was rejected out of hand. I was told, ‘We have our job to do and we’ll do it our way. You do your job. That’s it.’
So we went about those jobs without building any bridges. My job was to referee their games fairly and to make honest decisions. Many of those decisions upset them. I got many of those decisions right, but I accept that I got some wrong. That is life. That is football.
I certainly got some things wrong when I refereed Arsenal against Liverpool at Highbury in the first Monday night live TV game of 2000/01. Because Euro 2000 had not gone well for me, I was not in the right frame of mind for such a big match. It was probably my worst refereeing display, not so much for decision-making but in terms of my mental approach to the match. If I could change one game in my entire domestic career, it would be that one. I sent off Liverpool’s Gary McAllister and Didi Hamann, plus Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira; I booked four players. But, although I was not happy with my performance, when I looked at a recording of the game, the only really poor decision was to send off Hamann. I had already cautioned him and was convinced that he then pulled back Robert Pires by grabbing his shirt. When I looked at the incident again, however, the Liverpool player did not touch Pires. So I successfully asked the FA to withdraw that second caution. We did have a procedure to do that, and it meant that Hamann was not suspended for being sent off.
I was also in completely the wrong frame of mind before another Arsenal match. That was in December 2001 when I had just heard that Gerald Ashby had died. He was just fifty-two.
When I first became a Premier League referee, Gerald was a top ref and, although our personalities were very different, I gravitated towards him and was always pleased to listen to his advice. Once refs became professional, we each had a refereeing coach appointed. Gerald had retired by then and became my coach. That meant that I spoke to him on the telephone after every game to discuss issues and so on. I also telephoned him at other times and he was wonderfully encouraging, but then Gerald was a wonderful man; thoroughly decent and utterly honest. He was one of the biggest influences on my refereeing. He helped me work on my composure; he set me standards; he ensured I never became complacent. The moment I heard of his death was the first time my children saw me stifling tears.
I was struggling to control my emotions again in my car before the game. I went into Brent Cross shopping centre and bought a black tie, which I wore instead of my Premier League tie. I wore a green top for the match to accommodate a black armband on my sleeve. But my request for a minute’s silence was turned down – because it was ‘not really a football matter but a refereeing issue’. Instead, the four officials held a minute’s silence in the dressing room before the game. Again, I broke down.
Clearly, I should not have taken charge of the game, which was against Newcastle, but somehow I did. I refereed by instinct. I had to send off Craig Bellamy of Newcastle and Arsenal’s Ray Parlour and I did not have a good game. I wrongly awarded a penalty against Arsenal’s Sol Campbell. It was a poor decision. But the only reason I got through the game at all was that Gerald had taught me well.
Arsenal lost 3–1 and Thierry Henry led the protests at the finish. I had enjoyed a good relationship with Thierry up until that moment but he was apoplectic and absolutely castigated me. Incredibly, he confused me with Steve Dunn, who had handled Arsenal’s FA Cup Final against Liverpool the previous May. Thierry thought Arsenal should have had a couple of penalties in the Cup Final, and now he was screaming at me on the Highbury pitch. He said, ‘You’ve cost us again!’
The Arsenal supporters knew nothing of my grief about Gerald Ashby. They did not know that Thierry was abusing me, in part at least, for decisions Steve Dunn had made seven months earlier. They just saw their hero confronting a referee and so it was not difficult to work out which side they would be on. The crowd gave me more abuse than I have ever suffered before.
Later, when I was in the welcome sanctuary of my dressing room, Patrick Vieira arrived and said that he was conveying apologies from Thierry. But a month after that, Arsenal’s David Dein, who was the Arsenal vice-chairman and a big name at both the FA and the Premier League, had a prearranged meeting with the referees’ Select Group at Staverton. He made a presentation about refereeing abroad. He felt it was better in Italy than in England. We did not agree. We told him that if he saw their referees week in and week out, he would see all their mistakes. More importantly from my point of view, I took the opportunity to have a private word with Dein. I wanted to confront him about a rumour that Arsenal had asked that I should not referee any more of their home games.
I had gone to Staverton armed with a printout of all the matches I had refereed there – thanks to those results sheets my dad had persuaded me to start all those years before. The printout showed that everything about those games was normal – an average number of bookings and sendings-off, no statistically abnormal results. Dein, however, had his own view. We spoke for about twenty minutes and, finally, he said, ‘We don’t think you’re a bad referee. We think you’re a good, strong referee. But we just don’t think you can referee at Highbury.’
The Premier League did not ban me from Highbury – but I did impose my own ban after that meeting with Dein. I felt that it would be unwise to referee there with the home team so convinced I was about to have a bad game.
So I stayed away for three and a half years, until 28 March 2004, when Arsenal were at home to Manchester United, when I reckoned that everyone would be more focused on the football than the referee. In the tunnel before the game, Roy Keane was his usual surly self and I tried to lighten the atmosphere by saying, ‘Come on Roy, give us a smile.’ Patrick Vieira joined in the banter but Keane’s expression did not change. We kept on saying, ‘Come on Roy. Smile.’ Eventually he turned to the Arsenal captain and said, ‘If we were nine points clear, like you, I would be smiling too.’ And with that, his face did crack into a grin. The tension was broken.
The game went well. Thierry scored just after half-time, and Louis Saha equalized for United just before the finish. I had a good match. The ‘ghost’ of previous visits to Highbury had been laid. Hence, when it came to the ‘unrefereeable’ game the following season, 2004/05, both United and Arsena
l wanted me to take charge.
Not for the first or last time, I used some advice from Pierluigi Collina. He always refused to speak to coaches or players before a game because he felt it might suggest a lack of confidence, a weakness. So when I was offered the chance to address the Arsenal and Manchester United managers, or club officials, in the build-up to the match, I said, ‘No thanks.’
Instead, as I always did, I tried to assess the mood of the players by observing them as they warmed up. If they were relaxed, I could adjust my refereeing accordingly. If they were tense or aggressive, I could plan to referee in a different way. To me, that made more sense than having a cup of coffee with a chief executive or manager and asking him to ensure good behaviour from the players.
But that day at Highbury, the mood during the warm-up was not much of a clue as to what was about to unfold. As the players did their stretches and jogs, there were plenty of smiles, but later there were none at all.
The ‘mind games’ started as soon as I pressed the bell for the teams to leave their dressing rooms. Neither team emerged, because neither wanted to be first. Each wanted to leave the other standing about in the corridor. I pressed the bell a second time. Again nothing happened. Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson were keeping watch by their dressing room doors, each waiting for the other to blink first in this stand-off.
I then decided on a personal approach. I walked to the Arsenal dressing room. As I passed United’s room, Sir Alex let me know in three, chilling words what he expected of the game. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Good luck tonight.’ The ‘… and you will need it’ was unspoken but implied. I reached the Arsenal room, asked Arsène, politely, to let his team out, and he did.
I walked along the tunnel, next to Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira and tried to lighten the atmosphere. I said to Patrick, ‘Remember this fixture last year when we made Roy laugh as we waited to go out on to the pitch?’
Patrick replied, ‘That will not happen tonight.’
As we walked past the United dressing room I asked Sir Alex to send his team out. He answered, ‘Roy’s not ready.’
I said, ‘OK. No problem. He can join us in a minute.’
So the Arsenal line of players and the four match officials made their way towards the end of the Highbury tunnel.
Patrick dropped back and almost as soon as I had realized that he was not at the head of the Arsenal line, I heard raised voices further back in the tunnel. Patrick and Gary Neville were in each other’s face. Patrick was saying that he wanted to break the England defender’s legs.
At that moment, Roy arrived. He said, ‘Pick on someone your own size.’
I thought then, and have always thought, that was a brilliant comment, with six foot four inches Vieira squaring up to five foot eleven Gary Neville. But I did not have time to admire the playground taunt because now Patrick was squaring up to Roy.
Patrick said, ‘I’ll break your legs as well.’
Roy replied, ‘If you were that good, you’d be playing for Real Madrid.’
It was another clever riposte – Patrick had been courted by Real the previous summer – but I could not stand about admiring Roy’s repartee.
I could have ‘sent them off’, although we had not even made it to the pitch yet. Some disciplinarians will tell you that is what I should have done; that I should have dealt severely with them there and then. But I needed the Frenchman and the Irishman on the pitch. I knew that if I could manage them during the game – and I felt sure I could – then the two influential captains could help me control a volatile game. I also thought that sending them off before the kickoff would ramp up the tension.
So I split them up, and we went out onto the Highbury pitch. When the time came for the toss of the coin, I pointed to their captains’ arm bands and told them I expected their help and co-operation during the game. Patrick and Roy refused to shake hands. Neither was willing to call ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ so I assigned the sides of the coin for them.
The testosterone was still coursing through the players’ veins when they kicked off. Tackles went flying in. I awarded six free-kicks in the opening two minutes as I stuck to my game plan of keeping a lid on everything at the start.
Ashley Cole, then still an Arsenal player, claimed an early penalty after going down with what looked to me like a comically unconvincing dive. In fact, it looked so bad to me that I thought he might have been trying to make a point about an innocuous tackle on Wayne Rooney by Sol Campbell at Old Trafford in the previous meeting which resulted in a penalty. I did not award anything in this match but made a point of running close to the Arsenal full-back and saying, ‘Careful Ashley …’ I did not want to caution a player so early in a powder-keg game for a technical offence.
A few minutes later, Gabriel Heinze became aggressive when I awarded a free-kick against United. He thought, or perhaps pretended he felt, that I had reacted to the crowd. I put out my hand, palm outwards, as a ‘calm down’ gesture, but Gabriel was barging forwards and almost bounced off my hand. Roy joined in the protests, and a little posse of players formed. I told the United players I was not going to be intimidated by them, or the Arsenal crowd – I was going to be impartial.
As I continued to clamp down on anything looking like a foul, Roy came over and said, ‘You’re making it worse.’
I replied, ‘Give me two more minutes and the game’s yours.’
I hoped that my rigorous opening gambit would tell the players I was in charge and that, after that, they would have confidence in me and not try to settle their own feuds.
And, immodest or not, it worked. The ‘unrefereeable’ game was an absolute epic, with some magnificent, high-tempo football. Patrick scored and Ryan Giggs equalized. Denis Bergkamp put Arsenal ahead again just before halftime but nine minutes after the break, Cristiano Ronaldo equalized again. Four minutes later Ronaldo got another and, a minute before the finish, John O’Shea grabbed a fourth for United.
I handed out six cautions and one red card. The red was when Mikael Silvestre headbutted Freddie Ljungberg. As Silvestre left the field, Sir Alex, who had not seen the off-the-ball incident, asked him what had happened. Mikael replied, ‘He pissed me off so I butted him.’
The only other contentious issue was the outburst of profanities from Wayne Rooney, which I have dealt with elsewhere. That day, in that difficult match, I dealt with it by involving Roy Keane in calming down young Wayne. So I think I was right not to send off Roy in the tunnel and correct not to send off the hot-headed Rooney. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, thought so as well. He wrote thanking me for the way I had handled the match.
If I had let the game explode, it could have done terrible damage to the image of football and the English Premiership. Instead, we had a fixture which enhanced the reputation of both.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Betrayed but Selected
The 2004/05 season ended with one of my top ten games. It is impossible for me to pick the best match of my career, the most satisfying achievement or the favourite highlight – although that doesn’t stop people asking me. But if I had to give some games back – to have them erased from history and from my memory – then I would definitely keep matches like the FA Cup Final, World Cup games, European Championships, play-off finals and so on. Despite the fact that there were disappointing circumstances surrounding some of them, the big, prestigious, memorable appointments probably comprise the ten or so high points of my refereeing career. And right up there, near the very pinnacle of that top ten, would be the 2005 UEFA Cup Final.
Remember how difficult it was for me to sit and watch Euro 2004 in Portugal the previous summer; how unfair and political it was that I did not referee in that tournament? Yet, instead of becoming bitter and demotivated, I remained completely professional, 100 per cent focused and utterly committed. I had lifted myself to referee as well as I possibly could.
In acknowledgement of that, UEFA, who had not sele
cted me for Portugal in 2004, picked me for one of their top two appointments at the end of the following season. They could not give me the Champions League final, because Liverpool were involved, but they gave me the next best thing, the UEFA Cup Final – and it was in Portugal. There was a nice symmetry about that. It felt like redemption.
Given a choice between Euro 2004 and the UEFA Cup Final the following summer, I would have taken the Final. Honestly. Going to Euro 2004 would have meant recognition as one of the top dozen referees in Europe and would have probably involved doing a couple of group games at best. Getting the UEFA Cup Final in 2005 meant they thought I was one of their top two – and some of the committee men told me that I would have been given the Champions League final if Liverpool had not been participating.
There is a maxim about the important thing being not how low you drop but how high you bounce back. I don’t care if it is a cliché or not. It was pertinent for me because I knew I could not have bounced back any higher. I had recovered from the dismal disappointment of missing Euro 2004 with a successful, thoroughly enjoyable season and I was rounding it off with the biggest appointment UEFA could give me.
Some of the credit had to go to Craig Mahoney, the referees’ sports psychologist, who had found such apposite words when there was a danger that the poisonous feelings about missing Euro 2004 could corrode my attitude and belief. Some of the credit should also go, as always, to my family, for providing unstinting and unquestioning support. Whenever I was with my family, I remembered what was really important but I also gained the strength and resolve to work harder and referee at my very best.