Mick
Life President
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2003
- Messages
- 10,958
A win tonight and we are in the playoffs for sure. Normally a cause for celebration, but things seem a little flat to me given that three months ago today we were sitting proudly at the top of the League and very short odds for automatic promotion.
Who wouldn't have taken our current situation at the start of the season ? Who would have taken it three months ago?
Anyway, the referee for tonight's match is Graham Scott from Abingdon in Oxfordshire. He is in his 4th season as a Football League referee and makes his fourth visit to Roots Hall. (It would be his fifth, but the second didn't happen due to the appropriately Antarctic weather at the time.)
The first visit was the home JPT defeat by Orient in 2008/9. He has since done an away match at Gillingham - the Easter defeat in 2009/10 and then, more recently, this season's home game against Morecambe (a red card for Jevons and 2 yellows for them). Finally, he oversaw our abject performance in the home debacle against Bradford City ... so we're overdue a win with him.
He is getting good appointments including televised games, but his card count has rocketed this season with a massive 126 yellows and 9 reds from 36 matches. Certainly when I've seen him he has seemed a little over eager to reach for his cards, but his decisions were more right than wrong.
Assistants are two Roots Hall regulars, Carl Fitch, the ginger-haired school teacher from Ipswich and Wade Norcott from Harlow. The fourth official sees the replacement of Gary Evetts by Lee Betts from Great Yarmouth.
It is to be hoped that Mr Scott doesn't feel compelled to referee in the style of his assessor for the evening, the infamous Kelvin Morton from Bury St Edmunds. This man's refereeing career was littered with condemnation and controversy. The man who awarded 5 penalties in one match (not necessarily wrong per se) and in another game, when reaching into his pocket for a card to show a, I think, Charlton player, he instead flourished his handkerchief!
Who wouldn't have taken our current situation at the start of the season ? Who would have taken it three months ago?
Anyway, the referee for tonight's match is Graham Scott from Abingdon in Oxfordshire. He is in his 4th season as a Football League referee and makes his fourth visit to Roots Hall. (It would be his fifth, but the second didn't happen due to the appropriately Antarctic weather at the time.)
The first visit was the home JPT defeat by Orient in 2008/9. He has since done an away match at Gillingham - the Easter defeat in 2009/10 and then, more recently, this season's home game against Morecambe (a red card for Jevons and 2 yellows for them). Finally, he oversaw our abject performance in the home debacle against Bradford City ... so we're overdue a win with him.
He is getting good appointments including televised games, but his card count has rocketed this season with a massive 126 yellows and 9 reds from 36 matches. Certainly when I've seen him he has seemed a little over eager to reach for his cards, but his decisions were more right than wrong.
Assistants are two Roots Hall regulars, Carl Fitch, the ginger-haired school teacher from Ipswich and Wade Norcott from Harlow. The fourth official sees the replacement of Gary Evetts by Lee Betts from Great Yarmouth.
It is to be hoped that Mr Scott doesn't feel compelled to referee in the style of his assessor for the evening, the infamous Kelvin Morton from Bury St Edmunds. This man's refereeing career was littered with condemnation and controversy. The man who awarded 5 penalties in one match (not necessarily wrong per se) and in another game, when reaching into his pocket for a card to show a, I think, Charlton player, he instead flourished his handkerchief!
