listening to 20man last evening and there was comments on a ref living 16.5 miles from the game he officiated at ..Bury v Rovers apparently it seemed a one sided game with a rovers player being booked quite quickly in the first half! twice, and hence a red. Although Bury seemed to have a very cushy game. edit quick check seems to be opposite bury 6 bookings rovers 4, 2 to same player Sinclair so person phoning in was off the mark, but how far should a ref live from the ground is still the question
I thought they had to be a certain distance away. Not sure how that matters though. I live 85 miles away and guess that would allow me to ref one of our games if the criteria was distance. Not sure about who the ref supports comes into it either. Howard Webb was often alleged to support Man U and there was an instance of a ref celebrating a Liverpool goal recently that I recall. We seem to get a mixed bag of refs. Some are ok, but quite often some are flippin' awful. I'm sure that they aren't being biased at all but some of their decision making can leave you wondering! Cant see that home advantage matters either. Certainly doesn't seem to for us.
