‘FOOTBALL Federation Australia's match review panel has today dropped A-League Grand Final referee Matthew Breeze from all refereeing duties for one year.
The panel found him guilty of making consistently inaccurate decisions (R8 offence) often resulting in unfair contests between two teams.'
Yeah. In my dreams.
So the A-League's done and dusted but the issue of poor refereeing isn't.
For Version 4 of the A-League, we saw the introduction of the Independent Match Review Panel and to be fair, I think I preferred the A-League without it.
Some of the more controversial decisions made by the MRP were the one-match suspension of Adam D'Apuzzo for a handball in the box that escaped the attention of the referee, the decision not to suspend Karl Dodd in round 12 for "violent conduct when not challenging for the ball" (something which is a sending off offence but was deemed to be dealt with by the referee) and their handling of the famous biff at the end of the Mariners and Jets Boxing Day derby match.
Two of these particular decisions appear to completely contradict each other.
The D'Apuzzo incident was dealt with at the time (i.e. it was said to not be a handball and the referee called play on) however it was later sanctioned.
On the other hand, the MRP claimed they couldn't intervene in the Karl Dodd offence because it had indeed been dealt with at the time.
Did anyone else get a little bit confused by this?
I am a firm believer that the introduction of the MRP was not a worthwhile venture.
So we retrospectively ban a player for a handball. Big deal - he'll sit out for a game then come back. The fact is that the penalty wasn't given at the time and banning the guilty player for a game is not going to balance this out. Luckily for Melbourne, they ended up winning the game 5-0, in another situation there could've been a worse outcome.
But if you take away the MRP, poor refereeing is still there.
As far as I can see, there are two ways to combat this.
Firstly, we can pay full-time referees, at least for finals matches. This would mean that we are more likely to get dedicated professionals handling contests. If this means getting foreign referees in then so be it.
The only problem with this is, as we've all seen, not all overseas and/or professional referees are better than those on home soil.
So I have a second idea that may or may not seem reasonable; we should red card the red card givers - impose bans of referees who consistently make inaccurate decisions.
This has already happened overseas, most notably in the English leagues.
Most people will probably remember the ghost goal awarded to Reading when they played Watford in a Coca-Cola Championship fixture in September last year.
For those whose memories need refreshing, the ball crossed the goal line wide of the goal. It should've been a corner to Reading, however, the assistant referee flagged for a goal and the referee called it as one.
I was in London at the time and it was front-page news, people were outraged and the FA was in disgrace. As a result of their actions, the assistant referee was dropped and the referee was demoted to the fourth official for the next round of competition.
Maybe the FFA needs to start doing something like this.
I hate to bring it up again but with the FFA overruling Matthew Breeze's grand final red cards during the week, the question of his handling of the game still remains.
It seems to me a bit strange that, despite Breeze making two clearly wrong decisions (in the opinion of the FFA) that ruined the contest and made the game horrible to watch as a neutral observer, no action will be taken against the incorrect referee.
Hopefully next season, the standard of refereeing will be improved. If it's not, for the fourth year in a row, we could have another grand final drama. And this time, Miron Bleiberg might be involved.
