Mick
Life President
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The authorities, as they try to give this competition more prestige than it perhaps deserves, are, in many cases, sending out "over-qualified" officials and tomorrow we have a team of SG1 officials. They're even sending a very experienced SG2 referee on a 350 mile round trip to hold up the numbers board !
Tomorrow night's referee is 35 year old Stuart Attwell from Warwickshire, refereeing his 7th Southend match.
A somewhat notorious official, Mr Attwell was promoted to the Select Group after just two unexceptional seasons as a League referee. It is fair to say that this fast-tracking favoritism caused more than a little resentment in the refereeing fraternity and there were plenty waiting to see him fall flat on his face ... which he duly did. Despite being miles out of his depth he continued to enjoy the unswerving support of David Elleray in particular and the PGMO in general and got rewarded for his incompetence with the award of a UEFA badge.
Even his friends in high places realised it wasn't working and half way through 2011/12 he was dropped from the Select Group. He will hopefully have learnt much in his two and a half years of failure as a top official and he had been diligently rebuilding his career in the depths of the Football League and gaining the experience he was so sorely lacking when he was promoted. This went so well that in early 2016 it was announced that he had been promoted back to the Select Group for 2016/17 and beyond. He is a much, much better referee than he was back then.
He demonstrated this improvement in has last Southend match 18 months ago when we beat Sheffield United 3-1. He had an excellent match with one yellow apiece - ours was Thompson. Despite it being just a season and a half ago, only two of the team that started that day are still at the club.
The Southend match before that wasn't great, in fact it wasn't even average! The 2-1 home defeat by Cheltenham in 2012/13 with just their keeper cautioned.
Before that was earlier the same season for the 1-0 victory over Wycombe thanks to an early Assombalonga goal. We also shaded the yellow cards 4-3 (Spicer, Timlin, Prosser and Assombalonga). Opinion was mixed about his performance but you could not fault his attempts to play advantage!
Before his previous Southend game I wrote "As we take on Chelsea competitively for the 3rd time in the club's history, referee Stuart Attwell from Warwickshire referees us for the 3rd time. (The other two were one home win, one away win ... I'd take the draw to complete the set!)". Well we all know what happened there and he had a good match in front of 41,090 fans. Macca and Grant were our two yellow cards..
His other two Southend games were also refereed well enough. Swindon at home and Millwall in 2007/8, his first season. He sent off Scannell and booked Mulgrew at the New Den but I think there were few complaints.
He has, strangely, had just 9 matches this season - 4 Premiership, 3 Championship, a League Cup and another Checkatrade. These have produced an average-ish 30 yellows and a red. He seems to get more than his share of Premiership board-holding duties.
Assisting will be Constantine Hatzidakis from Bromley, often a "busy" lino, and Mark Scholes from Buckinghamshire. Standing by with the numbers board will be ex-SG1 and now SG2 referee Keith Stroud from Gillingham in Dorset whose last visit to Roots Hall was to referee the goalless Wigan home match the season before last; he took charge of the Derby Reading match a couple of days ago.
Tomorrow night's referee is 35 year old Stuart Attwell from Warwickshire, refereeing his 7th Southend match.
A somewhat notorious official, Mr Attwell was promoted to the Select Group after just two unexceptional seasons as a League referee. It is fair to say that this fast-tracking favoritism caused more than a little resentment in the refereeing fraternity and there were plenty waiting to see him fall flat on his face ... which he duly did. Despite being miles out of his depth he continued to enjoy the unswerving support of David Elleray in particular and the PGMO in general and got rewarded for his incompetence with the award of a UEFA badge.
Even his friends in high places realised it wasn't working and half way through 2011/12 he was dropped from the Select Group. He will hopefully have learnt much in his two and a half years of failure as a top official and he had been diligently rebuilding his career in the depths of the Football League and gaining the experience he was so sorely lacking when he was promoted. This went so well that in early 2016 it was announced that he had been promoted back to the Select Group for 2016/17 and beyond. He is a much, much better referee than he was back then.
He demonstrated this improvement in has last Southend match 18 months ago when we beat Sheffield United 3-1. He had an excellent match with one yellow apiece - ours was Thompson. Despite it being just a season and a half ago, only two of the team that started that day are still at the club.
The Southend match before that wasn't great, in fact it wasn't even average! The 2-1 home defeat by Cheltenham in 2012/13 with just their keeper cautioned.
Before that was earlier the same season for the 1-0 victory over Wycombe thanks to an early Assombalonga goal. We also shaded the yellow cards 4-3 (Spicer, Timlin, Prosser and Assombalonga). Opinion was mixed about his performance but you could not fault his attempts to play advantage!
Before his previous Southend game I wrote "As we take on Chelsea competitively for the 3rd time in the club's history, referee Stuart Attwell from Warwickshire referees us for the 3rd time. (The other two were one home win, one away win ... I'd take the draw to complete the set!)". Well we all know what happened there and he had a good match in front of 41,090 fans. Macca and Grant were our two yellow cards..
His other two Southend games were also refereed well enough. Swindon at home and Millwall in 2007/8, his first season. He sent off Scannell and booked Mulgrew at the New Den but I think there were few complaints.
He has, strangely, had just 9 matches this season - 4 Premiership, 3 Championship, a League Cup and another Checkatrade. These have produced an average-ish 30 yellows and a red. He seems to get more than his share of Premiership board-holding duties.
Assisting will be Constantine Hatzidakis from Bromley, often a "busy" lino, and Mark Scholes from Buckinghamshire. Standing by with the numbers board will be ex-SG1 and now SG2 referee Keith Stroud from Gillingham in Dorset whose last visit to Roots Hall was to referee the goalless Wigan home match the season before last; he took charge of the Derby Reading match a couple of days ago.
