Bannister blamed, Attwell escapes

Not surprisingly, the saga of Saturday's bizarre incident in the Watford vs Reading game, where referee Stuart Attwell awarded a goal (on the advice of assistant Nigel Bannister) when the ball clearly went nowhere near the goal, rolls on. Firstly, the game will not be replayed, and the decision stands. Fairly obvious I guess - you can't change history.

But the big question now - what will happen to Attwell and Bannister? It appears that the blame is being placed firmly at the door of the assistant referee. This doesn't surprise me at all. Stuart Attwell is the rising star of refereeing, the youngest ever Premier League referee, who the PGMO (Professional Game Match Officials Ltd) have made a special effort to fast-track to the top. They clearly believe he has the ability to do really well and have a long and successful career. Here is a chance to show how a young referee is succeeding at the top level of the game. The international list beckons for Attwell in January, the next step in his rise.

It was all going to plan. Attwell had handled two Premier League games, and didn't hit the headlines. And then comes Saturday, and Bannister's intervention. The plans are in ruins. The rising star has fallen, being involved in making one of the worst ever decisions.

The argument that Attwell isn't at fault doesn't wash with me. He is the referee, and takes ultimate responsibility for any decision made during the match. Yes, to ignore the advice of an experienced assistant like Bannister would be unusual, but shouldn't be discounted. Could Attwell really not see that the ball didn't go into the goal, especially when it was so far away from it? Did the reaction (or not) of the players not arouse some suspicions in his mind? Like it or not, Attwell must take his share of the blame, be it smaller than Bannister's.

But he isn't being blamed. The PGMO don't want their plan for Attwell ruined - all the effort they have put in. Attwell's face fits, he is their future of refereeing, and they don't want to ruin it all over one decision. So they'll hide him away, and he'll come back, like nothing has happened. As for Bannister, who knows what will become of him. As it is, Attwell has an appointment for Saturday, albeit as fourth official as Middlesbrough, but its more than Bannister has.

If someone like Lee Mason or Phil Dowd had made that decision, then would the outcome have been different? I reckon so. They are referees who aren't really among the favoured ones in the Select Group, and they might be considered expendable. But not Attwell. I have nothing against him, and its not his fault that he is being favoured, but if standards are being applied consistently then he should be facing some punishment, like it appears Bannister will.

But this gives rise to a bigger question - why are we seeking someone to blame? Why this need to apportion blame and punish referees? Dermot Gallagher has made an interesting point:
"What we need to do is counsel him (Bannister). He's been on the league list for 10 years and a knee-jerk reaction of kicking him out will do him no good and do the game no good. He's made a mistake towards the end of his career but we need to look at how this occurred. We need to get his confidence back. He must be at rock bottom after the hammering he's had.''

Kicking someone while he is down does no-one any good. But the culture of the PGMO seems to be that when a mistake is made, someone has to be blamed and punished. The blame culture seems to be the way Keith Hackett runs his organisation. Now, some would say that referees need to be accountable for their mistakes, and they do. But to take this to the extreme level it seems to be at now just puts more pressure on individuals, worried about surviving on the Premier League list. It could be that Hackett is being pressured to use this culture of blaming individuals because of the perception that refereeing standards are low. Either way, the blame culture of finding someone and punishing them is, in my opinion, not the best strategy.

Problems of this sort have been around for some time. We see the same referees getting the big games, the ones who are favoured. We see referees who make high profile mistakes kicked into the gutter until everyone is happy they have suffered enough. Here we have, in one high profile incident, evidence of both of these problems. The saga will continue to run.