What a day was yesterday. What a feast. For sporting gluttons like me, it was just a wonderful, almost endless buffet. And I don’t even need to be watching all of it, just knowing its being played is sufficient. Such excitement, the likes of which the sporting world hasn’t really produced since… well, probably since last weekend. Amazing.

There were both sports. Football and rugby. (Are there any others? Really??) Spurs won. England won. Unfortunately Arsenal won too. And England, after the most incredible game of international rugby ever, and winning in record breaking form against the horrible French, failed by a whisker to win the 6 Nations title. So having beaten the Frog 55-35, all our players acted like they’d lost. Which was a shame because for everyone watching, the spectacle of the match almost over-shadowed the failure to top the table.

But what really stood out was the refereeing in our two national sports. And attitudes to referees.

The ref in rugby is God. His word is final, absolute and beyond question. He is thus treated with the utmost respect. He is never harassed, bullied, cajoled, pushed, shouted at, insulted, abused or ganged up on. But that is because the refs in rugby act totally professionally. Consequently, players in rugby don’t cheat. They don’t act, they don’t feign, they don’t ‘simulate’, they don’t dive. To be honest, they don’t really need to; its fucking brutal enough without that rubbish.

And how refreshing to see the ref call over the two captains, tell them what he’s doing, and why, who the culprits were, what they did and the action to be taken. The skippers don’t argue, they can make a point but often the ref just silences them. Without argument or debate.

In the football, just yesterday, a ref sent off the wrong player in the Manchester City match. And a sending off in the 2nd minute of a game is awful. The ref didn’t listen to players telling him ‘it wasn’t me/him’, he just acted alone and got it magnificently wrong.

The problem is that whatever happens on a football pitch, there’s always about 15 players in the guy-in-black’s face screaming and shouting, half proclaiming innocence, the other half demanding a red card. So when something significant actually does happen, the ref is simply immune to the protestations of the players. Boy who cried ‘wolf!’ syndrome.

And it could all change so easily, so simply. Just legislate to protect the refs from the John Terrys of this world, and the others who abuse and try to bully them, its so easy to do. Use the 4th official to check a few things on tv replay, just important things, and don’t allow managers anywhere near the refs. Particularly Morinho and Wenger, or the game would never reach half time as they demand a check on every dubious throw-in award.

The only arguments against such an action revolve around money. Its not good tv. The players are the Gods, even though they act like scum. They cheat, they dive, they are horrible.

So don’t moan about poor refereeing when it really is so pathetically simple to change the whole culture and improve the standards whilst protecting the refs at the same time. I can’t understand why the footballing authorities are so ignorant and stupid. There again, they awarded Qatar the World Cup in 2022, so we can’t really expect much sense from them.

Happy Sunday, (Man United at Liverpool; Chelesa vs Hull; the classico this evening, busy day for Mel)

A xxxx