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He is my kind of referee, sometimes a little too lenient but a referee who will allow the game to flow and a referee who sees it as an objective to try and help the players to actually play a game of football.
It has to be said that he does issue more yellow cards to away team players and only seven home team players have seen his yellow card this season. Even so this means that he has still only averaged one away team player per game which is way below the average.
He was in charge of our game at Deepdale earlier in the season and one player from each side received a yellow card, Tony Grant and then Preston’s Colin Murdock. Both were without doubt deserved and possibly he should have sent Murdock off after what looked like another yellow card offence.
But you cannot have it both ways and supporters and players alike much prefer a referee who does not reach for the pocket every time there is an infringement. On ten occasions this season Cain has gone the whole ninety minutes of a match without issuing a single card.
As for red cards he has found it necessary to send a player off on only eight occasions in six seasons and the last to get the red card treatment from him was QPR’s Richard Paquette in a 1-1 draw at Cardiff in March of last year.
During that six year period he has refereed seven Burnley games with a total of four yellow cards and one red card, the red given to Colchester’s Lua Lua in a Clarets 3-1 win at the Turf.
With suspensions mounting up on a regular basis this is a referee that can certainly help in keeping players on the field.