Just seen this question asked on the BBC and Robbie Savage says No. He claims the problem isnt with referees not keeping up with play - they are just getting the decisions wrong. I disagree. Having a referee in each half gives: a) 2 pairs of eyes b) An alternate view point. Some incidents look different from alternate angles, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a referee to always be right therefore mistakes will be made. surely a 2nd referee minimises the chances of mistakes being made. I'd be all for 2 referees, what do you think ?
Aaah, well they are mic'd up to each other so if one is certain of a decision the other can concede and vice versa. If they are both certain but their views oppose they can have a quick chat - logic should pull through in that instance.
How can they disagree if they are on one half each? How does it give an alternat view point? They will judge within their own half. I think suggestions like this should be scrapped and use what we got - TECHNOLOGY! Before two refs figures out what happen - the entire stadium of 60 000 people could know because of the replays on the screen. I would say do it like Tennis - allow each team to use the replay of a camera 3 times. Then it will not be used for silly situations like (is it a throw in or not).
By half do you mean 45 minutes or one on the left side and one on the right side of the pitch? Because I think the latter is better.
No, you can't do that. You can't have a game being referreed one way in the first half, and then a different referee who's going to do it a different way come in the second half: the players won't know what's going on with the way the referee is officiating.
No .. there should be 2 referee's, one in each half of the pitch - that way you get a pair of eyes in front of play and behind it. Sometimes incidents can look a certain way from behind but completely different in front - often there is only one correct view - the view that show definitively what happened. Having a referee in front of play looking on and behind play covers bases. What we don't want is to stop the flow of football, this is a massive reason why video replays have been argued against so vehemently and rightly so. But having 2 refs means a ref could blow if he is certain of an offence because, lets be honest, refs do get decisions mostly right, if one ref misses the incident the other should see it. It would cut out a lot of diving where from one view it looks a blatant foul and another it is an obvious dive - refs are being fooled too well when it comes to diving, for example.
But should we though, I mean, football has changed, of that there can be no doubt. so shouldn't the officiating change too ? the ball goes forwards and backwards far quicker in modern football but we haven't upgraded the officiating to cope with the change.
We can all see what happened instantly most of the time by looking at action replays on the telly. Why isn't there a television referee for important decisions like in Rugby? FIFA are still farting around with trials for various systems like Hawkeye and others when it's easy to see if the ball went over the line or not by watching the action replay on SKY. Remember Lampards goal against Germany or Spuds goal against manure.
Gunner, I think TV replays are fine for certain incidents but not all, we don't want to have to keep calling play back for this and that because a replay saw an infringement. But I think having 2 refs would cut down on players getting away with diving, or an obstruction which looks like obstruction from one angle might be seen as the player having nowhere to go so not an obstruction. We want to keep the game flowing, I think TV replays would spoil that - unless it was for penalties or goalline controversies or sendings off.
Like a poster above suggested, if each team had something like 3 replays each then it would hardly affect the flow of the game as they'd use them for big decisions where the game should be stopped anyway.
You'd only use it for the contentious decisions, the ones that end up taking 10 minutes of players arguing etc of the game, a quick, "hang on ill check....Yep you handballed it, now **** off" and sorted!
Terrible idea. The game would be riddled with inconsistencies. You'd have one ref giving fouls, yellows and pens in one half and nothing being given in the other. It would create a schism in the match, with teams trying to make up for fair/unfair treatment in one half by trying to balance it out / get away with it in the other half. It would cause more problems than it would solve.
PISKIE - I can see that, this is the only real downfall with the suggestion that I can see. But surely the bottom line is some incidents are missed by positioning and only one pair of eyes, surely 2 pairs will reduce this, it must, logically.
It would be alot easier just to have extra linesmen, 2 either side and 1 behind each net, with 1 ref that was you'd get 3 sets of eyes+ the ref in each half, with each angle covered, one from the left, one from the right, one from the end and the ref from wherever the **** he is. or just give the ref a mic an let him chat to someone watchin on tele.
Incidents are missed you're right - but we already have linesmen as another four pairs of eyes - also don't forget the experiment with two more linesmen on the goal line. And guess what? That still doesn't eradicate the problem. Ultimately the ref has to take overall responsibility and make a call .If you had two refs it would add more confusion to the situation and take away the ability for one man to control the game.
I agree with this! Its not so much poor decisions but corrupt refs that is a bigger problem. right now the officials can have a huge say on the outcome of a match by making a few key decisions or to a lesser degree inhibit the control or ascendency of one team by constantly penalising against them and we see this all the time for no apparent reason during games refs suddenly start making a host of poor decisions that seem to apply mostly to one team.
each seat should have a bunch of scorecards 1 to 10. At halftime we can then show how we rated him/her. Same again at fulltime. At each contentious incident we 'might' be tempted to score the ref again........
I actually thought of a similar plan(a little like x-factor) But then I realised that most refs would just become homers and we would end up in a similar position!