Crackdown on dangerous tackles will continue, but A-Leagues referees know that having fans on board makes everyone’s lives easier, writes Tom Smithies.
It’s hard to know who might be the more nervous this weekend – players about to dive into tackles, or referees reaching for their cards.
Nothing provokes a storm like a controversial refereeing call, and the red card handed out to Adelaide striker Hiroshi Ibusuki last Sunday in the Isuzu UTE A-League – rescinded within 24 hours – was a particularly fine example of the artform. Debate continues to rage, but there’s some important context to note.
The red card doled out by Daniel Elder was wrong, but it also didn’t come out of nowhere. A few weeks ago the A-League Men referees and VARs gathered on the Gold Coast with their bosses from Football Australia, officials from the A-Leagues and some football pundits.
What they were told was that those refereeing bosses and the A-Leagues wanted to see certain priorities put into play – protecting skilful players from dangerous tackles, getting the ball in play for longer, and increasing respect for match officials.
The last of those would probably provoke ironic laughter from the pundits who lined up to excoriate Elder last Sunday, but really no one would disagree with any of those aims. The devil, as always, is in the detail of the implementation.
The official line from FA HQ is that all those policies remain in place, and that Elder went too far past the new benchmark for what constitutes a dangerous tackle – it’s meant to be one that combines force, intensity and intent to a level that puts the receiving player in danger. Putting intent in there is important because refs have been told to look out for persistent fouling of playmakers.
But referees are human and after the criticism of Elder, they will undoubtedly will be a little warier this weekend of being seen to react too sharply to a particular tackle (or, in the case of a VAR, be willing to overturn an on-field decision). And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the truth is we’ve been here before.
There have been clampdowns on dangerous play in the past, refs have begun the season with an apparently itchy trigger finger, there’s been outcry over a couple of decisions and eventually everyone finds a level of intervention that is acceptable to the players, refs and as importantly the public.
That’s also an important factor. Clubs make multi-million-dollar investments in players every year and want them protected, obviously. Fans want to see the likes of Nani, Ulisses Davila, Milos Ninkovic and Joe Lolley on the pitch, not in the treatment room. But they also want to see matches refereed sympathetically and with a feel for the game, always thinking about the spectacle from the fans’ point of view. If that’s acknowledged and discussed openly, we will more quickly arrive at a place where refereeing decisions are broadly sympatico with the audience.
There will always be some tensions. So far this season the “ball in play” time during A-League Men matches has varied by a mind-blowing 20 minutes, which is one of the reasons the refs have been told to maximise that – get substituted players off quickly (and spuriously injured players too), play advantage as much as possible etc. But some coaches are openly looking to slow games down, and are doing everything they can to do so. That’s all part of the fun and games, the theatre of football.
So is debate over referees’ performances, just as much as players. But that debate has to play the ball, to coin a phrase, not the ref, because otherwise, in the end, everybody loses.
