Feeble media only exacerbate problems with refereeing standards

As a football fan, when a referee makes a terrible decision against your team, it makes you inconceivably angry. Every time it happens to me as a fan, I contemplate writing this article.

While in this article I’ll write about a very specific set of circumstances, I’m convinced that the issues covered are universal and that any football fan will empathise with being in this position.

First, a little context. Burnley played Birmingham City in a SkyBet Championship game at Turf Moor this Saturday. The game was broadcasted live on Sky Sports. David Coote was the referee.

In the first half hour of the game, there was a penalty claim after Lukas Jutkiewicz, a Burnley striker, was brought down in the box. It looked to me to be a clear penalty. In the first half there were several other questionable decisions made by the referee against Burnley.

In the second half, Burnley had a penalty given against them that objectively should not have been a penalty. Both Peter Beagrie, the in-studio pundit, and Don Goodman, the co-commentator, stated clearly that it was “soft” or shouldn’t have been given.

In the post match interviews, the Birmingham player that was supposedly fouled in the penalty incident, Donaldson, said: “they say if you feel a touch you go down, so I went down.”

These comments mean, therefore, that it wasn’t a foul even in Donaldson’s standards. There was contact, but contact ≠ a foul. So he’s basically said he’s been told to deceive the referee and win a penalty. He’s been told to cheat.

Sky, as a broadcaster, turned a blind eye towards this incident. Although their pundits indirectly criticised the decision they chose to use the words “professionalism” and “soft” rather than “cheat” and “wrong”. That’s terrible and unjust. These things seem petty, but they matter in portraying the overall performance of the referee in the game.

It’s not just me.

In a post-match interview on Sky, Gary Rowett, the Birmingham City manager, in turn criticised the referee’s decisions and implied his team were hard done by. The interviewer chose not to push him on this subject. He did not refer to the “soft” penalty decision, nor ask him his opinion about it.

Sky also gave the Man of the Match award to Donaldson, the player that cheated to win the penalty.

Some may argue that it’s not Sky’s role to take a side in these debates, but good interviewing, journalism, and broadcasting always sees the media play devil’s advocate, ask difficult questions, and broach touchy issues. It is their duty to ask these questions of every manager. The same applies for Sean Dyche. He criticised the decisions and Sky should have pushed him further on that.

This issue isn’t just centred around Sky’s coverage of issues of diving and refereeing performances. The football media have long been a cesspit of access journalism and is full of safe, clichéd soundbites. Any change in their attitude towards cheating necessitates a change in the whole of the way the football media works.

In a world of swish graphics, dramatic sound effects, and polished pundit personas, Sky has forgotten it has a duty to hold the game to account. You’d think with the billions of money Sky invests into the game via expensive licensing deals, it’d be able to be a weighty opposition to nefarious and unsavoury behaviour in the game.

Sky is keen to blow its own trumpet too often, all the while never actually fulfilling the media’s ability to criticise strongly and force real change.

These issues can be forced from elsewhere, obviously. Maybe it’s too much to expect Sky to be able to take the initiative in this instance. A rule that allows the media to lobby to interview the referee — or even necessitating post match referee interviews — would be a start. Although this could arguably make refereeing harder due to intense public scrutiny, at least there’d be accountability. At the moment we have assessors that most fans have no clue. Give us accountability or at the very least, give us transparency.

This isn’t a new argument. We’ve been here a thousand times before and nothing has happened before. I feel quite foolish even re-trotting the same arguments again in this work but as long as football fans are being duped and underserved by the footballing authorities and the media, problems deserve to be highlighted. Criticism of referees by fans is often dismissed as bitterness, despite any validity their arguments hold. That’s a shame.

But this issue has got to be dealt with at some point. It’s embarrassing for the game of football if the authorities and media continue to turn a blind eye. It’s not going to go away, it’s going to get increasingly worse.

Maybe the issue comes down to whether you’re okay with sportspeople cheating. Maybe the FA, Football League, and Premier League are cool with that. But I, and many many other fans, are not cool with and we deserve better than the laissez faire attitude that those in charge or with influence currently hold. More needs to be done.