Seeing Red Read Free Page B

would be inconsequential. I knew too that referees cannot report every player and every manager who says something out of order – we’d get writer’s cramp.
    So, if you had asked me at that moment whether I had handled the game well, my honest assessment would have been that I had been a bit lenient afterwards towards Chelsea. But I would also have said that it had been probably the best game of the season so far and that, yes, I had helped facilitate it. I had done my job.
    Five minutes after I had reached the officials’ changing room, there was a knock on the door. It was John Terry and Gary Staker, Chelsea’s player liaison officer and administrative manager. Terry said, ‘I need to know why you sent me off.’ In theory, he was not meant to be in my room. Only managers were permitted to go to the referee’s room, and then only thirty minutes after the game. The idea is to give people a chance to calm down and to prevent the referee’s room being besieged. But I like to sort things out face-to-face and I had got on well enough with Terry for several years. So I said, ‘You had already been cautioned and then, in my view,you grabbed Ledley King and pulled him to the floor in an aggressive fashion. It wasn’t as if you just lent on him – you pulled him down.’
    He said, ‘Oh. It wasn’t a straight red then.’
    â€˜No, John,’ I confirmed. ‘It was a second yellow card.’
    The fourth official, Peter Walton, who was also in the room, chipped in, ‘So it means you will only miss one game.’
    â€˜Does it?’ said Terry.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Walton. ‘It’ll be the Carling Cup tie against Aston Villa.’
    â€˜Fine … that’s fine then,’ said Terry. He left, looking relieved.
    I was not sure what that was all about. His initial inquiry – ‘I need to know why you sent me off’ – was a bit odd. The referee’s assessor, Gary Willard, and the match delegate, former West Ham midfielder Geoff Pike, were happy as well. Willard gave me a strong hint that he wanted me to report Chelsea for the incident when I had been surrounded by an angry group of players and both Willard and Pike made comments about Terry looking guilty, rather than surprised, when he was sent off.
    I did not have an inkling that a firestorm of controversy was about to erupt. Out of the blue, Chelsea attacked me from three directions. First – and I probably should have seen this one coming – manager José Mourinho purported to be mystified by the disallowed Drogba ‘goal’ and by Terry’s sending-off. He told reporters, ‘I don’t understand why John Terry was sent off. I cannot find a reason for that. The team gave everything and played high-pressure football. We had chances with one player less. But Mr Poll goes home, and nobody can ask him about the reasons behind his decisions. I never ask referees about their decisions because they alwayshave an excuse. So why should I ask him? He would say something like “Didier Drogba was free and had a clean header but somebody thirty metres away made a foul.” They always have an excuse for their decisions.’
    There was some seriously flawed logic there. He seemed to think that I should have allowed Drogba’s ‘goal’ to stand because Terry’s foul was some distance away. That is self-evidently nonsense. On that basis, if someone thumps one of Mourinho’s men a long way from the ball, the referee should take no action.
    But Ashley Cole, who provided the second prong of the attack on me, made the same daft mistake in his reasoning. He said, ‘Sure, JT got involved with someone on the edge of the box but it was nowhere near the ball.’ So what, Ashley? It was a foul. It occurred before Drogba headed the ball. It was not a goal – and it should not have been a controversy.
    Cole made a much more damaging allegation