So the A-League fans and knockers alike want to see better quality football with the most skilful athletes possible. The FFA and the clubs are all striving to make this happen but there is one major thing holding back the quality of the League.......

The Quality of Refereeing

There was of course some controversy around the young debutant referee who controlled the Victory vs Glory match, however I do not think it is fair to gauge the quality of the league on the game of a first timer. This would be like trying to work out the quality of the players in the A-League based on the form of a kid from the bush playing his first A-League fixture. So instead (and in order to keep this blog on my particular area) I would like to look at the quality of refereeing in the Mariners versus Phoenix game last week. So let us turn our ever critical stare to Peter O'Leary.

Referee O'Leary is a very experienced and qualified referee who was considered for the FIFA World Cup and although he did not make the cut this time, he has officiated numerous games in the biggest tournaments around the world at the junior level. So you expect that such a referee would be able to easily handle an A-League game without major trouble or controversy. To be fair to Mr O'Leary he did manage to complete the game without major incident and keeping his cards in his pocket for the majority of the game. However I do have a few concerns about the way that this referee controlled the game.

So this season the Mariners are attempting to play a more controlled game that is not based on route 1 and long ball tactics. So in the game last Sunday afternoon the Mariners started the game quite strongly with some good attacking and adventurous play in the first 10 mins. It pretty quickly looked like Phoenix were not keeping up with the Mariners style of play so they resorted to what many have previously pointed out as a Mariners tactic, kicking the style out of the opposition.  Phoenix started to play a more physical style of football which while not dirty enough to be nasty certainly was designed to restrict the Mariners' free flowing play in a way that could be considered illegal. So when this tactic was being employed by Phoenix, what was the response from Peter O'Leary? He let them play it and barely blew a whistle.

Now I am not one who would want to see the pea blown out of the whistle by the referee such as Matthew Breeze has been known to do at times. I, like most people, enjoy a free flowing game that has fewer whistles and cards, however referees should establish a baseline of behaviour with the whistle if a team starts to use physical tactics to restrict a skilled team. This is not something that was achieved on Sunday, instead the Mariners' play was stifled and eventually led to a yellow card for a player who became overly frustrated with the lack of action from the referee for unwanted attention.

I know a number of people will defend the refereeing style and flowing play as being the Australian way because we are not soft like some of those Asian leagues. But at the same time it is not possible to have open attractive play if the opposition are allowed to kick a player out of the ball. Don't get me wrong, the Mariners were not guiltless in this game, they likewise started a physical game - in fact Toto found out he was not in Kansas anymore after he clattered into Pedj Boijic and then became intimately introduced to the Wellington pitch. Ironically this was the softest dive of the game (which even the NZ commentators noticed) yet Mr O'Leary blew his whistle and gave the man named after Dorothy's little dog a free kick.

If the FFA refereeing fraternity do not start to reward free flowing attacking football by protecting the skilled players and penalising the less skilled, more brutal players, we will always struggle to attract highly skilled players to the A-League. Without these types of players, the next generation of players seeing local football will not be inspired to play attractive style such as Total Football. If the youngsters watching the A-League are predominately seeing ‘Kevin Muscat chop down anything that moves in the 18 yard box' style play as opposed to the ‘Manny Muscat chop up the Mariners defence in the 18 yard box' they will grow up and learn the way to play the beautiful game is UGLY.