More About Bias
Bradford City 1 Hereford United 3 - League Two
I have on a scrap of paper a list of things I want to achieve for 2008 - as close as I get to writing a list of resolutions - which tells about wallpapering back bedrooms and fixing bathroom leaks. About going to more gigs and about creating different websites. It is the things I’m doing next year.
When I was a teenager I used to make new year’s list that would include the phrase “Go to 20 away games.” Not anymore and this 3-1 defeat to Hereford United is a blinding example of why.
This is the build up part of the match report. After the details of the game I’m going to tell a truth as I believe it and you can believe it or not. Here is the build up.
Having let GNN leave and shifted Omar Daley up field Stuart McCall put out a raw midfield that included Scott Phelan and Tom Penford with Kyle Nix - so impressive a player Nix - and Joe Colbeck wide and the young four - five following Alex Rhodes’s entry replacing an injured Penford - performed well against a much fancied Hereford side that arrived and exited Valley Parade second in League Two.
Indeed on the field there was very little to separate the Bantams from the Bulls but the 3-1 win for the visitors was entirely down to Referee Graham Laws and his two assistants. The opening goal came when Theo Robinson was allowed to handle down a free kick and lash home and by free kick I count the most curious award when Omar Daley was pushed to the ground in the rain and penalised. In driving rain and on a pitch that bordered on unplayable any team would want free kicks given on the flanks to be hoisted into the area and poked home.
Second goal and Trevor Benjamin held Donovan Rickets around the waist as Dean Beckwith headed in. For a minute before I watched Benjamin, Matthew Clarke and Ricketts jostle. I watched Benjamin put his arms around Ricketts and I watched the ball headed in.
Stop. Let us step back to May 1981 and my first ever football game - Bradford City vs Hereford United. We lost 1-0 that day but I was hooked. 26 years on and had I seen this game I would never have stepped in a football stadium again so unjust was the game.
Back to the future and I can not believe that the second goal was given but I doubted the first one would be. After David Wetherall had followed in a rebound to get one back for City Hereford “regained” the two goal lead when they tonked another curious flank free kick in to three offside players in the eight yeads in front of Ricketts goal. When the rules of football were modified to include the concept of interfering with play it was never supposed to be that players would be allowed free reign to wander offside in the six yard box in front of the goalkeeper.
I assume this because if this is the plan then the game is really, really in trouble.
Second half and City introduce Billy Topp who looks good but in this pantomime the game is behind him. The rain stops but the game was over a long time before.
So to the chase rather than the build up. Referee Graham Laws took charge of this game in a biased way understanding that the word bias means “A particular tendency or inclination” which was most obviously seen in the giving of bookings - a yellow card for Paul Heckingbottom’s first and minor offence while Ben Smith was visibly told that his third offence had gathered him his caution - and then seen in the blind eye turned to offside players at one end while Matthew Clarke’s attempt to covert a corner which saw Benjamin push him to the ground did not garner the obvious penalty. It was one set of rules for one team and another set of rules for the other.
At this point I should bring forward my oft given comment that either the referee was so bad that he randomly gave a set of bad decisions which totally perverted the game because he was having “a bad day” rather than anything more sinister or that he had somehow created the result himself because he had been bought or betting or something of that ilk.
After that I would say that I was not sure which of the two options I would prefer and muse on either the idea that I would rather they be bought than the officials be that inept or I would wax lyrical about Juventus and the idea that if corruption can exist in the highest level of European football isn’t it a given that it could in League Two in England?
I’d say that in both of these scenarios the Football Authorities are ready to turn a blind eye. They brush off the idea that bad officials are ruining games and refuse to make public referee’s post-game reports that would at least tell supporters. We are the guys who pay the wages after all. The Authorities of the game mount a bizarre high horse to the idea of corruption in the English game and will reply with angry to the suggestion that there should be so much as an investigation into bent officials and bought wins. From the top of my head I can think of Lou Macari and his betting on his own Swindon team to lose, of Tony Kaye and the 1966 match fixing scandal of Aldelecht being found guilty of bribing Referees to beat Nottingham Forest in the European Cup in 1981, of the Italian titles won by Juventus which appear on the CV of the man that the Football Association have made England Manager.
I could rant about all these things but I’ve done so too many times now and write up my new year’s list without the ambition to go to as many Bradford City games as I can because - simply - as a fan I can’t trust the result of a game like Bradford City 1 Hereford United 3.
I believe that for whatever reason Graeme Laws wanted a two goal win for Hereford United and made sure he got one. Perhaps he had money on it? Perhaps he had been paid to get it? Perhaps he just wanted to see if he could make a result? I’d love an investigation into this game, into the Joe Ross game at Luton three years ago, into last year’s defeat to Blackpool at Valley Parade but I will never get one and while I make no suggestion as to why Laws created a result I do believe he did.
So without a sense of clarity and justice in the game I drift and I drift away. Many things can be done on a Saturday that are not watching perverted football games and often I do them and I doubt I’m alone - 13,000 at Valley Parade and about 2,500 when we go away from home - not because of a lapse in love for the club but for the game that reveals in turning a blind eye.
26 years ago I watched Bradford City lose to Hereford United and fell in love with the game, now I am very much out of love with football but as a man who has given a quarter of a century to the game I believe I - we - deserve a game which is clean and is seen to be clean and we deserve officials who can be trusted to be honest and not inept and until we get those things interest in football at this level will wane.
Hereford United’s supporters at Valley Parade wandererd away singing that they were going up - they are if they get Graeme Laws every week and they may make sure they do - but there is a hollowness to football when trust - as it was today - is missing. it was today - is missing.
League Two is beginning to settle into my mind. I’ve done a look up and down the list of teams - nothing very impressive - and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason we are going to be at the same level as Rochdale is that the characterlessness of the club means we deserves to be at the level of Rochdale.
Characterlessness I’ll qualify. This season City have been subject to some appalling and frankly biased refereeing decisions and have had a share of bad luck that hampers most teams. Our reaction to these knock downs has been to hug the canvas for as long as possible. There are many reasons for this - too many loan players, a change in manager, losing key members of the squad, injuries, a hostile crowd, an inequity in the structure of the game - but few would argue that it is the case.
To escape this League Two the club is going to need major work and prime in that work is the appointment of a manager. Julian Rhodes wants someone in the chair by the end of May and he wants to talk to Stuart McCall about the job.
It is probably clear that City need McCall more than McCall need City but need him we do. No other names suggest themselves as being able to have the sea-change in atmosphere - who would boo a McCall team? McCall would get the shield of bullet-proofness for longer than other managers and might actually get some work done - and culture at the club.
Adding McCall to City could put a few thousand bums on seats, it could get people behind the club again. It could be the answer to all the minor problems that have added up to a major crisis for this club.
Make no mistake Julian Rhodes cannot keep bank rolling a City side that loses him money. We need McCall to return to kick-start all the things we need to turn the club around. We need a manager whom people want to do well rather than the procession of gaffers who it seems failure was almost welcomed for. I heard I don’t mind if we lose cause then Todd will be sacked
far too many times last year.
However it is said that McCall would not want to join a League Two club. That relegation has cut off our chances of getting the number four for his third stay at VP. Perhaps so.
To that all I can say is that Bradford City is in dire need - in dire need for the changes that McCall could bring - and should he decided as he has a right to that he can watch the club flounder from afar in what is in a very real and very serious way our hour of need then perhaps I hold him in too high regard.
A club’s legend - this club’s legend - needs to be prepared to get hands dirty otherwise what is the point of being the legend?
Bradford City’s problem since the McCall/Paul Jewell/Geoffrey Richmond days has been a critical lack of leadership. A McCall led City have a chance to establish a direction again - to rally under a banner so lacking under Colin Todd or Nicky Law - and stop the backbiting and arguments that go along with every game. Valley Parade could unify behind Peter Beagrie or John Hendrie but it would be behind McCall and the divisiveness of the last seven years could be put to rest.
Beagrie, Hendrie, Chris Wilder, Wayne Jacobs. Other managers could turn around the club but McCall - with the status he would bring - has the best chance to avoid a future in which attendances dwindle, in which Rhodes can no longer fund a club making less and less money every year, which is so far away from the top table of English football that the risible, lamentable trickle down hardly registers.
In the twenty five years since we were last in the bottom division football has changed beyond recognition. For most of those twenty-five years we put the club on a progressively higher footing but - and apologies to the sensibilities on this but it is a grim fact - we are at a storm front in football where the haves have and the have nots are swept away.
Twenty-five years ago we were in the have nots by some degree. We rose into the haves of the Premiership and the Championship and black balance sheets and entertaining football, we need to get back not just to have a better future but to have a future.
Twenty-five years ago when City started our last campaign in the bottom division in the first game we have a debut at right back to a 16 year old picked up after being released.
You can guess what his name was?
AFC Bournemouth 1 Bradford City 1 - League One 2006/2007
Bradford City 1 Oldham Athletic 1 - League One 2006/2007
Ask me about why Bradford City have struggled this season and I have a single, clear , unequivocal answer for you. I look at the goal that was chalked off at Scunthorpe and I remember Steven Schumacher’s red card against Blackpool and I add to that the incongruous decision to send Joe Colbeck off after City took the lead against Oldham at Valley Parade and I say without doubt that the most important factor has been the decisions given by referees.
More of which later. City took a long trip to Bournemouth for what was tagged as a must win and with Eddie Johnson filling in for Mark Bridge-Wilkinson in the midfield it seemed that the Bantams would leave empty handed despite heroics by Donovan Ricketts but a very late header from Spencer Weir-Daley in the 92nd minute left the Bantams with one of the four points many were suggesting City needed from the Easter weekend and hope seemed to return.
Against Oldham that hope was manifested and dashed.
Moses Ashikodi used his pace to get onto the end of a Billy Paynter flick down and lashed a shot in half way through the second half and it should have been enough to give City the win. Of course it was not because as it traditional this season the referee had yet to come into play.
Mr R L Lewis gave City a throw in at the Midland Road/Bradford End of Valley Parade and Oldham’s players grabbed the ball only to throw it away to the corner flag when they saw that the decision had been given the other way. No card was shown despite what it expressly stated in the rules of the game. Ten minutes and one City goal after that Joe Colbeck was given a second yellow card for banging in a cross after taking the ball over the touchline.
Two incidents which are denoted identically in the rules - in fact the are covered under Rule 12 Point Four: Cautionable Offences which says
A player is cautioned and shown the yellow card if he… delays the restart of play
Both offences denoted the same way in the rules so I am desperate to know why Mr Lewis believes that one results in a yellow card and the other does not? I assume that League One is played the rules of football FIFA set out so why is one offence cautionable and one not?
Without assigning a reason for it - I’m looking for answers not giving them - to give the same offence one punishment for one side and another for the other is bias.
It matters not what the opinions on the players involved are - many said that Colbeck was stupid to get himself sent off and cost us the win - but I believe that considering that this decision, that the Schumacher sending off at Blackpool, that Eddie Johnson’s disallowed effort against Yeovil, that David Wetherall’s goal at Scunthorpe compared to Robbie Williams’s for Blackpool are going to cost us our place in this league then we deserve an explanation why the most simple tenant of the game - that the rules are applied equally for both sides - is not being applied at Valley Parade.
To add insult to the technical offence that Colbeck committed Oldham’s goal scorer Luigi Glombard played the game protected by a yellow card shield recklessly tackling Mark Bower - take a look at Rule 12 again - before finally getting booked for “over celebrating” his goal. The connotation of the rules of football - the spirit of the game - are not that a player can swing wildly for the ball endangering his opponent and not be cautioned then feel the force of the law for being happy to have equalised. The spirit of the rule dubbed “kicking the ball away” is not to punish players who run over the byline in the attacking half and cross the ball to the keeper anyway any more than they are supposed to punish strikers who finish when offside.
The fact that it was Colbeck - so often and so ill a figure of ire at Valley Parade - dulls the edge of comment. Close your eyes and imagine it was St Jermaine Johnson in his final game at the club. Remember the fury and put it behind a player who actually wants to play for this club.
So there it is. The ball game perhaps and with four games left City need three wins from a trip to Brighton, home clash with Leyton Orient, a visit to Chesterfield and the final game of the season at home to Millwall.
Three wins would give 52 points and probably safety. I’d take the points from Blackpool, Yeovil, Scunthorpe and Oldham but it looks like this club is going to take the fall for a serious of Refereeing decisions which the charitable call the utterly poor state of officialdom in football today.