And The Winner Is…

Graham Poll??***!!!*?

Talk about lies, damned lies, reasons for invading Iraq and statistics. So, is that why Jose Mourinho bounded on to the Stamford Bridge pitch the other week during the Manchester United reserve game to confront Poll? To offer him congratulations on winning the Right Result award for bbbbesssssst reffffffffff…no, I can’t even type it, let alone say it.

I may have the shakes for two reasons. One of them may have been seventeen years hard drinking. The other may have been seventeen years watching Graham Poll refereeing. And I don’t think the comparable lengths are necessarily a co-incidence.

There are any number of people who have had negative spins on Poll’s refereeing career. I wrote in a column for another web-site last year that Poll’s greatest achievement was probably to be the first and thus far only person to unite the footballing world behind a Graham Souness opinion.

And fans of Isthmian League football like me have hated Poll a decade longer than anyone else, as he refereed in our Isthmian League as far back as the late 1980s.

We first noticed him because he looked so young, although some of his contemporaries looked about twelve and refereed games accordingly. Poll was 26 and from the terraces was, not looked like, WAS Martin Fry out of popsters ABC. And refereed games accordingly. All the traits we came to know and hate were already there.

The bookings, certainly. He may have kept them to two per player, maximum, in those days. But he never lacked a card when the actual football threatened to overshadow him. A Woking side which was two months away from hammering West Brom in the FA Cup, were four down in a league game after 50 minutes. So Poll had to act fast, sending off their opponent’s first substitute within seconds of coming on – before reaching the centre-circle, in fact. No more than a booking. But who’d be writing about that seventeen years on?

My team, Kingstonian had an innovative setpiece move (later copied by Luton Town, if memory serves), which fooled every defence. Until….

Seeing one defence caught unawares, Poll helpfully shouted out “they’ve taken the free-kick” at the top of his voice. Not content with that (and Sheffield United fans may wish to move to the next paragraph at this juncture), he ran towards a forward who was bearing down on goal unchallenged, lost his footing and executed a textbook sliding tackle just inside the box, injuring the player in the process.

I’m only surprised he didn’t give the penalty.

He was soon attracting attention higher up the game and waved goodbye to the Isthmians. A few years later, he was progressing steadily up the Football League list and in charge of West Ham v. Leicester, live on TV – where, we assumed and hoped, his already considerable sins would find him out. No chance.

Within seconds of the kick-off, a Leicester defender clattered a West ham forward from behind, but Poll waved play on, West Ham scored two passes later and Poll got the credit (AND remembered to book the defender). The Premiership beckoned.

Amid his well (over?) publicised controversies and frequent mistakes in the ‘best’ league in the world (stop laughing in Madrid), Poll did manage the afore-mentioned Graeme Souness trick. In 1997, the moustachioed Scottish funster declared prophetically that: “Mr. Poll has a reputation within the game as a man who wants to make a name for himself in the professional game.” And who could argue with that?

So it was the irony of ironies when Poll finally got his comeuppance at the 2002 World Cup Finals and it wasn’t his fault. He was odds-on to referee the final. Only England getting that far could stop him. So he was odds-on to referee the final.

Then Danish refereeing assistant Jens Larsen loused up two offside decisions in the Italy/Croatia group game (rendering the normally-apoplectic Italian manager Giovanni Trappatoni even more apoplectic). And Poll was sent home as near as he could have been in disgrace without mooning Sepp Blatter during first half stoppage time (a PR stunt we’d ALL applaud). If there isn’t a statue to Larsen somewhere, there should be.

Of course, Poll was back in favour in good time to genuinely mess up a 2006 finals match, dismissing the happy-go-lucky Croatians (the beneficiaries in 2002) in the process. Good job too. Because only England getting that far could stop him refereeing the final. And…well, precisely.

If it was just his talent for self-publicity which rankled (and it IS a talent – fifty times more ‘Google’ references than any other Premiership referee at the start of this season), Poll would be no more of a football hate figure than 70s Welsh arbiter Clive Thomas.

But whatever has been said in his defence – or statistics quoted by critically-acclaimed web-sites (er…), Poll isn’t and never has been that good a referee. It has just been his fortune to blow a whistle in an era when style and substance share equal billing. His image is his sole value to the game.

Fame didn’t see him neglect his roots, however. He refereed Kingstonian one more time in 2001 – albeit in a fourth round FA Cup tie rather than a league game. Kingstonian were looking like the story, leading 1-0 at Bristol City with the three minutes of declared stoppage time completed, all other results in on Grandstand and the ball cleared for a City corner.

Poll should have called time as the clearance was made. But he was no Clive Thomas, remember? (Or, for that matter Germany’s Herbert Fandel, who finished last week’s Champions League final with ‘un-necessary haste’ as Milan held on to win). With the Match of the Day clock showing 93 minutes 44 seconds, City equalised. They won the replay. And Poll was the story once more.

Which I guess is really why his particular name will always stick in this particular craw. Happy retirement, Poll. A right result for us all.

‘MotorMurph’ is written by Mark Murphy

Entry Filed under: MotorMurph Column

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