Bennett brings the optical illusion

Last updated : 21 November 2008 By Tony Scholes
He refereed our 2-0 defeat at Gillingham in the 1997/98 season when Paul Barnes played his last game for the club, a week later he was on his way to Huddersfield in a deal that saw Andy Payton arrive at Burnley.

That day Bennett yellow carded two players. As you will see below one of those was a Burnley player, namely Andy Cooke, and interestingly the Gillingham player carded was none other than current Claret Ade Akinbiyi.

More recently he refereed our important league game at Walsall on Easter Saturday 2004, at a time when both clubs were fighting against relegation. He had a good game that day but it's probably no surprise I saw that with the Clarets winning 1-0 with a Robbie Blake penalty.

As for Bennett. If you listen to Andy Gray you would think he is the worst referee ever to set foot onto a football pitch. He's card happy, that's for sure. I've just looked at his record since that last Burnley game and in that time he's handed out an incredible 680 yellow cards and no fewer than 48 red cards.

Amazingly he's currently on a run of twenty games without a red card and I'm sure when I make reference to his last red card you'll all recall it. It was at Old Trafford and he sent off Liverpool's Javier Mascherano. It came just days after the Mike Riley/Ashley Cole incident and Mascherano received a second yellow for remonstrating (for want of a better word) when Fernando Torres was carded.

And to prove a point, Andy Gray who was commentating claimed it as a ridiculous piece of refereeing by an incompetent official.

The fact is Bennett has best been described as having a schoolmaster approach to refereeing and there's no doubt his style leads to a lot of cards with little leeway given.

This season he's not sent anyone off in twelve games but his yellow card count has now reached 53 and in no game have there been less than three cards whilst in his only Championship game this season he yellow carded nine players as Wolves beat Coventry 2-1. Of those 53 cards 26 have gone to home team players and 27 to away team players.

We know what we are going to get tomorrow, and we know at some stage we will see his yellow card brandished as if the players are naughty school boys. Still, at least Andy Gray won't be here.

There are some interesting names amongst the other three officials. Andy Halliday (London) is one of the assistant referees but the other is Nigel Bannister (East Yorkshire). Bannister is the assistant who somehow, because of an optical illusion, flagged to award Reading a goal at Watford when it went nowhere near goal.

The fourth official is Andy Woolmer (Northants) and just one week ago Woolmer was in the middle when the Clarets won 2-1 at QPR. He was heavily criticised by QPR caretaker boss Gareth Ainsworth who claimed he'd had a poor game. It was not an opinion shared by many.

Previous Burnley games:

Season

Opps

V

Res

Y

R

Burnley players carded

a

1997/98

Gillingham

a

0-2

2

0

Cooke

2003/04

Walsall

a

1-0

2

0

Grant Roche