Premiership referee for first game

Last updated : 08 August 2003 By Tony Scholes

Chris Foy from St. Helens has been appointed for the game and this will be his first game since New Year’s Day when his season came to an abrupt end with injury, that last game being Oldham’s 2-1 win at Tranmere.

Just over two weeks earlier he had been at the Turf for the Burnley v Rotherham game but he could hardly be blamed for the defending that day or the fact that we threw one in. There were five players yellow carded that afternoon with three of them Robbie Blake, Steve Davis and Glen Little being Clarets.

His previous visit was in April 2001 for the visit of West Brom, a game that ended 1-1 and also one player from each side carded, Mitchell Thomas was the Burnley player to find himself in the book.

Other Burnley games have been the 2-0 defeat at Notts County in the promotion season and League Cup 1st round ties at home to Lincoln in 1997/98 (won 2-1) and Bury in 1998/99 (lost 4-1).

His record last season was average in terms of cards with 78 yellow and 5 red in 18 games. That’s just over 4 yellows per game and that is certainly not high for a Premiership referee. He’s unlikely to keep his cards in his pocket all afternoon though, he hasn’t managed that since a 1st Division game between Stockport and Crewe in December 2001.

His assistant referees will be Dave Babski from Lincolnshire and Andy Butler from Lancashire.

This season four areas have been targeted for improvement as follows :

  • Penalties – referees have been instructed to be extra vigilant at the taking of penalties and order a retake if the goalkeeper moves forward before the kick is taken and the penalty is missed.
  • Behaviour of club officials in the technical area will also be monitored closely. Referees and fourth officials have been reminded that anyone leaving the area to remonstrate with an assistant referee, using abusive, insulting, offensive or threatening language or gestures, or persistently failing to comply with the Laws of the Game, League Regulations, competition rules or the requests of the fourth official can be expected to be reported.
  • Match Officials should also pay attention to goal scoring celebrations and caution players who, in their opinion, make provocative gestures, climb on perimiter fences or go into the crowd, or delay the restart of play due to excessive celebration.
  • Reckless challenges which endanger the safety of an opponent will also be punished. Where the challenge is regarded reckless but the ball is taken cleanly the offending player should be cautioned. But if the challenge takes the player, or the ball and the player, a red card should be shown.

So goalkeepers at penalties, the Stans of this world and celebrations are a higher priority than the fourth place reckless challenge. Having said that it looks as though we are going to be faced with a mountain of red cards in the opening weeks with referees going over the top with their interpretation of challenges.