GRAHAM POLL

Seeing Red

For Julia, Gemma, Josie and Harry

Contents

Foreword by Sir Alex Ferguson |
1. Alone in the Middle |
2. Beckham Calling |
3. Chelsea on the Attack |
4. Big Time Charlie |
5. No Defence from John Terry |
6. Stop the Ride |
7. Despicable Outburst |
8. Fat King Melon |
9. Cup Final Blues |
10. Collina, Dad and Me |
11. Running Backwards and Moving Up |
12. A Tring Thing |
13. Smiling at Warnock |
14. 'Robbed' of a Million |
15. Lost Identity |
16. Red Wine and Blue Tank Top |
17. An Offer I Had to Refuse |
18. Savage ‘Humour’ |
19. Sleepless in Japan |
20. Gerrard, Zidane and a Full Set |
21. Not Bitter but Angry |
22. Arsenal, United and That Game |
23. Betrayed but Selected |
24. Home Thoughts from Germany |
25. 'Some Confusion' over Yellow Cards |
26. Don't Blame Anyone Else |
27. Woolmer Green to Wembley |
Appendix: My Top Ten Frequently Asked Questions |
Acknowledgments |
Index |

FOREWORD

By Sir Alex Ferguson

Referees have football’s poisoned chalice. Obviously the game needs refereeing and yet very few people want to do it. So the likes of Graham Poll, who get involved at a young age at grassroots level, deserve enormous credit and the thanks of all us who care about the game of football. Perhaps – no disrespect, Graham! – they are not the greatest footballers but they want to be involved in football because they love the game, and that is a very good thing.

Then, if they work their way up to professional level and the very serious stuff, they become the focus of an enormous amount of scrutiny. It is not just me, and all the other managers, watching their every move and being very demanding. It is not just the players and the fans who are focused on everything they do. It is, of course, all the television cameras. If a referee makes the smallest mistake, a television analyst will tell the world, ‘That mistake cost this team a goal.’ It is incredibly difficult to have the confidence to make decisions in those circumstances. Big brother is watching you all the time.

That is why, when the discussions were going on about referees becoming full-time professionals a few years ago, I was against the move. At a meeting in London about the subject I said that it didn’t matter how much referees were paid and how often they trained, some of them would still not be able to make decisions. I said that it would not matter if we paid referees £300,000 a week and got them training every day; some of them would still not be able to make decisions.

I think I have been proved right about that. Some of our professional referees still cannot make decisions. That is a human characteristic which you will find in every walk of life. It is not confined to refereeing. You can either make a decision or you can’t and I have worked with people, and known people, who just cannot.

My summary of Graham Poll is quite simple. He can make decisions. Without question, in my time in England, he has been the referee who has been easily the best decision-maker of all. He has been able to deport himself throughout his whole career with a confidence, and with expression, which has never been diluted by the presence of dozens of TV cameras watching him.

That view is supported by sound evidence, because it is not just me who thinks Graham has been a good decision-maker. That is what many others have said. That praise has enabled him to go into games with a certain confidence, but he had to have the gift for decision-making in the first place and had to earn the praise that came his way.

I am not saying that he gave decisions I approved of, or which favoured my club. He has taken some of our big games, and he has been hopeless in some of them! But now, as Graham is retiring, I am not assessing his career on the basis of some decision he made ten years ago or something like that. I am appraising him on the basis of the whole career and, as I say, he was never afraid to make decisions. When, as a manager, you take your team to places like Arsenal or Chelsea or Liverpool for really big games, you want a strong referee and that is why, for those huge fixtures, I was generally pleased to see the referee’s name listed as ‘Graham Poll’.

The other aspect of his character which struck me, as well as his ability and readiness to make decisions, was that he smiled when he refereed. I noted that the very first time he refereed a Manchester United game – against Queens Park Rangers in 1994. I remember that, in my match report to the authorities about the referee, I wrote that Graham was the first referee I had seen since arriving in England who I thought had a chance of being very good. I made that comment because I had seen him smiling.

With some referees, if they smile you get worried because you think they are about to do something to hurt you! But lots of them are too uptight to smile at all during the ninety minutes. Over the years, I came to know that when Graham smiled during a game, it meant he was relaxed and enjoying himself and enjoying the game. He was delighted to be on the pitch with great players and able to express his individuality.

I get asked to talk about a lot of people in football. I get approached to do a lot of forewords to books but I turn down many of these. I have to assess whether the person concerned has made a genuine contribution to football, and I am happy to introduce Graham’s book because he has passed that test in my mind. He has, indeed, made a real contribution to football with his ability and his personality.

If he is retiring because of any disillusionment, I am sorry about that, but I know he has not fallen out of love with football itself. In what proved to be his last season he was still able to smile – a genuine, warm smile – during games. He is right to get out before he stops smiling.

CHAPTER ONE

Alone in the Middle

I stood in the centre-circle of the almost empty stadium in Stuttgart, fearful and very tearful. It was an hour and a quarter after the game and I craved a private moment at the scene of my public humiliation. The only place where I could be sure of being alone was out there on the pitch, where, in one sense, a referee is always alone.

The Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion had been revamped for the World Cup. It held 52,000 spectators and boasted the two biggest video screens in Europe, apparently. Cleaners were threading their way along the rows of seats and there were some lights on desks high up in one stand where journalists were still working on their reports. They were writing about the shocking mistake I had made but were probably too preoccupied to look at the forlorn figure in the middle of the pitch.

I was certainly preoccupied. I was in turmoil.

It was Thursday, 22 June 2006, the day I went from being the bloke who had a good chance of refereeing the World Cup Final to the clown who would always be remembered for a cock-up.

Billions of people around the world know that a football referee shows a player a yellow card when he cautions him. If he has to caution him a second time, and has to show him a second yellow card, then he must also show him a red card and send him off. Two yellows equal a red – simple. Most of those billions around the planet also know that I got it wrong. Mistakenly, unforgivably, I cautioned Croatia defender Josip Simunic three times, and showed him three yellow cards, before producing the red.

As I looked up, unseeingly, into the nearly deserted stands, and through the halo of the roof into the night sky of Germany, I thought about the magnitude of my mistake. Its implications kept going around in my head. I was too upset to think about the future but I did conclude that my twenty-six-year career was ending there and then. I worked out later that the game in Stuttgart was my 1,500th match, exactly. At that moment, I assumed it would be my last.

I became aware that there were other people out on the pitch area and saw that assistant referee Glenn Turner was standing, appropriately enough, by the touchline. I walked over and he gave me a hug. Neither of us said anything. Neither of us could. Finally, I left the pitch to make my way to the official car which would take me back to the hotel. But I took one last, lingering look back at the stands, the roof, the lights and the scoreboards. I was convinced I would never referee in a top stadium again.

There were even lower ebbs to come. In the days that immediately followed, I was in a dark, black cave. And for a long time afterwards there were bleak moments when the harrowing events of that night in Stuttgart came back to overwhelm me. I don’t suppose I shall ever stop having nights when I lose sleep. I have a life sentence of asking myself, ‘Why?’

But I did not let my career end there. I did not want to be defined by Stuttgart. It is only part of my story.

Yet I know that other people do define me by Stuttgart and the biggest mistake I made. It became clear, in the season that followed, that the wound my career suffered that night was, indeed, mortal. So we shall return to the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion in this account, just as I return there in my mind all too often. And I shall explain what happened – even though I cannot explain why.

But first I want to tell you how, in the season that followed the 2006 World Cup, some very good folk, like David Beckham, tried to heal that wound. I also need to tell you how others, like John Terry, made the pain impossible to ignore.

CHAPTER TWO

Beckham Calling

The first telephone call I received when I arrived home from the World Cup was from David Beckham.

My wife, Julia, picked me up from Heathrow airport on her own, without our three children. Neither of us wanted pictures of the kids in the newspapers. She thought, as well, that I would need a bit of time alone with her, a bit of support, before being strong in front of our two daughters and our son.

Then, about an hour after I had arrived back, at last, to my home in Tring, my mobile rang. I did not want to talk to anyone but I answered it and a voice said, ‘Graham? It’s David. David Beckham. Becks.’

I thought it was a joker or a hoaxer. But he said, ‘Remember I got that shirt for your daughter, Gemma?’

So I knew it was him. It was the England captain. He was in a hotel in Gelsenkirchen and the next day he was going to lead his country in a World Cup quarter-final. Yet he had taken time to telephone me. I had already received one message of support from him. The England squad had watched my own World Cup implode and several had sent messages to me via another referee who visited their base camp. I was told that Beckham, the captain, had made a special point of saying, ‘Tell him to keep his chin up.’

Now Beckham was on the telephone; a man and a father who could empathize with me and who wanted to reach out in friendship to me and my family. He knew all about making a mistake at a World Cup – and more than anyone about being vilified for it. People in England had hanged effigies of Beckham after he was sent off in 1998 against Argentina.

I had played a small part in helping him after 1998, by encouraging him during the Community Shield match which began the next season. He was only twenty-three then. Now, in 2006, Beckham was such a global mega-celebrity that when he phoned me, I was as excited as a star-struck kid.

I had been there, done that and got all the refereeing shirts. I was blasé about celebs. And at that moment, I didn’t care about much at all, because I was so crushed by Stuttgart. Yet when Beckham phoned I fumbled with the buttons, trying to put the mobile on ‘speaker’ so that Julia could hear. I did not manage to find the right buttons. In any case, what the England captain said was a personal message for me.

He told me not to let it get me down. He told me it would pass. He asked if there was anything he could do.

What a man.

Friends and family had helped me when I was in the black cave of my abject despair in Germany. Thinking about the precious people in my life had provided the first pin-pricks of light. Now, back in England, Beckham’s humanity gave me real inspiration.

A lot of good people also helped persuade me to keep going. The saying is that ‘you learn who your friends are’ and that is true. But you also learn that some people you barely know are decent as well. I remember collecting my son, Harry, from school one day in the season that followed the World Cup, when Burnley manager Steve Cotterill telephoned. He said, ‘I hear you’re thinking about packing it in, Pollie. Don’t do it.’ I had only refereed Cotterill’s team once and yet he had made the effort to find my number and contact me. Gestures like that meant a lot, and so did the support of Keith Hackett, the man in charge of England’s professional referees, who said to me, pointedly, ‘Tell me why you should give up?’

So I kept going and the first match I refereed after the World Cup was a friendly between Tring Athletic and Bedmond Social. I had promised my local club that I would do it and I did not want to let them down. There were only about fifty spectators and I could not help thinking, as I warmed up, ‘This is my 1501st match. If things had gone differently, match number 1501 might have been the World Cup Final.’

During the game, one of the players hacked somebody down but, because it was a friendly, I didn’t book him. I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, mate – in the season that would have been a yellow.’

He replied, ‘And two more and I would have been off.’

It was the first joke made to my face about Stuttgart. I managed a wan smile. I felt no antagonism at all towards a player but, in that moment, I saw a future of endless similar jokes.

The next day I refereed another friendly – between Chelsea and Celtic at Stamford Bridge. Uriah Rennie became unavailable and they asked me. It went well enough and on the Friday I went to Chelsea’s training ground to talk to the players about new interpretations of the Laws. José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, had asked for me. That too, went very well. Everything was sweet.

But then came the first competitive match: Saturday, 12 August 2006 – Football League, Colchester United versus Barnsley. I could not face it.

The plan was to ease me back in. The Football League season kicked off before the Premiership and so it seemed a good idea for me to start at Layer Road, Colchester. But I was not even ready for that. I pulled over and sat in the car in a lay-by on the A12, with the radio off, alone with my thoughts. They were all negative thoughts. For the first time, in a career that had taken me from Division Five of the North Herts League to two World Cups, I did not think I could fulfil an appointment.

But of course I had to and of course I did.

Colchester had been promoted to the top division of the Football League for the first time in their history. Their ground held only 6,000 and there were just 4,249 present for their second home game of the season, the Barnsley match. Yet I knew there would be a big media presence.

Peter Drury of ITV had already telephoned me to ask if I would do a pre-match interview with Robbie Earle. Peter is a good friend and I had admired Robbie when he was a player and had grown to like him as a man. But I declined the invitation to talk to the nation. I had made up my mind that an interview I had given in Germany would be my last public word for a year at least.

An ITV crew was lying in wait as I got to the ground and a camera was trained on me for every step of my walk from the car to the dressing room. Robbie Earle asked for ‘just one comment on the record’ but I said ‘No’ again. Later I ambled out into the middle for the pitch inspection, faking total confidence. The camera followed me again.

In the press box, at the modest occasion of a Football League game, were some big-name, big-hitting newspaper writers: the columnists and opinion-formers. Most of them had formed their own opinion about me years before. They thought I hogged the limelight. But I really did not want any publicity from them, particularly on that day.

When I went out to warm-up I braced myself. At best, I expected merciless mickey-taking from spectators. At worst, I feared scorn and derision. What I received was applause and some encouraging remarks from spectators. I have never been more delighted about the English trait of rallying round someone who has suffered. As the local football paper, The Green Un, remarked, ‘Rarely has a referee been so popular.’

Of course there was banter. In one area of one stand, a group of supporters had pieces of yellow card with the number three written on them by the same pen and in the same handwriting. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble. Perhaps it was a coincidence that an ITV camera was stationed in that part of the ground. Perhaps.

The game kicked off. Eventually and inevitably I had to take a player’s name. Out came my yellow card and I heard the chant that was to provide backing music for my season: ‘Two more … he only needs two more.’

That time the joke brought a genuine smile to my face and I thought, ‘You can cope with this, Pollie.’

So I was up and running. Now what I hoped for was six months of … nothing. No headlines and no controversy. I wanted the only reference to me to be the one at the bottom of reports, under the teams, where it said, ‘Referee: G. Poll (Herts)’.

A week after the Colchester game, the Premiership season kicked off and I took charge of Arsenal’s first match at the stunning new Emirates Stadium, against Aston Villa. It passed without incident and I was less of a story for the media than I had been the week before.

Fulham’s match against Sheffield United at Craven Cottage was my 300th Premier League fixture, and the next time the Select Group of referees gathered together, there was a little presentation to mark what was a significant milestone. However, in my frail state of mind, I took it as a sign that my race was almost run. I knew I would not reach 400. I wasn’t even sure of reaching 350. So instead of celebrating passing the 300 mark, I just thought, ‘That is your last milestone, Pollie.’

The matches kept coming and I was successfully avoiding headlines. I refereed the Merseyside derby at Goodison, which Everton won 3–0. I took charge when Arsenal won 1–0 at Old Trafford. I was back at Old Trafford when Manchester United beat Liverpool 2–0. They all went well; high-profile matches with a low-profile Pollie. Excellent.

I had a European Champions League match involving Real Madrid. Beckham made a point of coming to see me in my dressing room and, again, wishing me well. More encouragement. More positive thoughts.

I took charge of Chelsea’s home game against Aston Villa and should have sent off Chelsea’s Claude Makelele just before the end. But the referee’s assessor did not dock me any points for it. All was going swimmingly.

I was scheduled to referee Tottenham versus Chelsea. It was a Sunday afternoon game, which would be televised live, on 5 November. Inevitably, Sky TV’s pre-publicity asked, ‘Will there be fireworks on Bonfire Day?’ They obviously hoped the answer would be ‘Yes’. I was desperate for a ‘No’. Sky got their wish.

CHAPTER THREE

Chelsea on the Attack

At the start of every season, referees note the fixtures they consider ‘golden games’ – the top matches. In the Premier League they are the fixtures between the top four clubs and the derby games with the fiercest rivalries. Tottenham against Chelsea was not quite up there in that top rank, but it was certainly near the top of the next tier. For me, games at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane were enjoyable for two reasons. Firstly, they were easy for me geographically – the hotel in which officials gather before the match is a shortish drive from my home – and the second reason I enjoyed games at White Hart Lane was that the club looked after officials and their guests particularly hospitably.

The problem is that referees’ guests are seated two rows from the front, in a section next to some of the noisiest, most partisan away supporters. So, although nothing in the buildup led me to think that the game would be in any way out of the ordinary, on that 5 November my wife and children heard a few choice adjectives about me.

Chelsea scored first, after fifteen minutes. Spurs failed to clear a corner and Claude Makelele spanked in a twenty-five-yard, swerving volley. A few moments later, I spotted John Terry pushing and shoving as the ball came over for a corner and so I awarded a free-kick to Spurs. It was a perfectly straightforward decision but, after I had whistled, Didier Drogba headed the ball into the Spurs net. Spurs goalkeeper Paul Robinson had heard my whistle, and made no real attempt to stop the header, but Chelsea supporters thought, briefly, that their team had doubled their lead.

Instead, Tottenham equalized after twenty-four minutes. Jermaine Jenas took a free-kick and Michael Dawson, Tottenham’s six foot two inch defender, scored with a glancing header.

The first refereeing flashpoint was at what should have been a routine free-kick, moments before half-time. It was away on Tottenham’s right wing and should not have perturbed Chelsea at all, yet Makelele and Ashley Cole would not go back ten yards. When Makelele retreated, Cole edged forward, and vice versa. They both knew I was not going to let them get away with that, so perhaps their pantomime was designed to take the mickey and undermine my authority.

I paced out the distance and called out, ‘Claude, Coley … back you come … just here … please.’

They stayed put. Cole told me to ‘F*** off’.

I did not send him off for that. I know that those who disapprove of all swearing during a match will contend that I should have done; but I did caution both Makelele and Cole. I had done all I could to get them to retreat sensibly.

Aaron Lennon put Spurs ahead seven minutes into the second half. He controlled Robbie Keane’s deflected centre and then placed his careful shot out of the reach of Hilario. After sixty-three minutes, I cautioned Terry when he felled Dimitar Berbatov in full flow. Terry’s was the sixth name in my book and had no particular significance to either of us at that moment.

But as my watch ticked off the minutes, Chelsea, whose discipline had been poor all game, began to look spooked by the possibility of defeat. The Press Association reporter at the game wrote, ‘Chelsea had been clearly rattled by Tottenham’s fightback.’

Michael Ballack gave me some verbals, and when I cautioned him for dissent, a group of Chelsea players surrounded me. I restored order and dispersed the posse of players but felt it had been a concerted attempt to intimidate me. It was probably instinctive and not deliberate, but I made a mental note that I would have to report it.

Then, at a corner, Terry grappled with Tottenham defender Ledley King. He grabbed King’s arm and dragged him to the ground. I realized that I would have to send Terry off if I cautioned him again, but my honest, instinctive opinion was that the incident deserved a booking. If it had been a player who had not been cautioned already, it would not have been an issue, and so fairness required that I took his name, again.

A group of Spurs players, including Pascal Chimbonda, were confronting Terry and, as they did so, the Chelsea player began moving away from the penalty area. But he collided with Hossam Ghaly and I knew that, if I didn’t act quickly, there would be a really ugly scene. I called Terry over, showed him the yellow and then the red cards, and he left the field without a mutter of complaint. No other Chelsea players protested about their captain’s dismissal either – although they had complained about nearly every other decision throughout the game.

They found enough to moan about again when I ended the game a little later. As we walked off, Cole swore at me and had a go at my decision making.

I could have sent Cole off for that. I could have red-carded him for using insulting language, or shown him his second yellow for dissent, but I let it go. José Mourinho made a snide remark in the tunnel. Again, I did nothing about it. I was focused on reaching the changing-room.

Perhaps I should have done something about Cole or his manager, but I knew the punishments would be inconsequential. I knew too that referees cannot report every player and every manager who says something out of order – we’d get writer’s cramp.

So, if you had asked me at that moment whether I had handled the game well, my honest assessment would have been that I had been a bit lenient afterwards towards Chelsea. But I would also have said that it had been probably the best game of the season so far and that, yes, I had helped facilitate it. I had done my job.

Five minutes after I had reached the officials’ changing room, there was a knock on the door. It was John Terry and Gary Staker, Chelsea’s player liaison officer and administrative manager. Terry said, ‘I need to know why you sent me off.’ In theory, he was not meant to be in my room. Only managers were permitted to go to the referee’s room, and then only thirty minutes after the game. The idea is to give people a chance to calm down and to prevent the referee’s room being besieged. But I like to sort things out face-to-face and I had got on well enough with Terry for several years. So I said, ‘You had already been cautioned and then, in my view, you grabbed Ledley King and pulled him to the floor in an aggressive fashion. It wasn’t as if you just lent on him – you pulled him down.’

He said, ‘Oh. It wasn’t a straight red then.’

‘No, John,’ I confirmed. ‘It was a second yellow card.’

The fourth official, Peter Walton, who was also in the room, chipped in, ‘So it means you will only miss one game.’

‘Does it?’ said Terry.

‘Yes,’ said Walton. ‘It’ll be the Carling Cup tie against Aston Villa.’

‘Fine … that’s fine then,’ said Terry. He left, looking relieved.

I was not sure what that was all about. His initial inquiry – ‘I need to know why you sent me off’ – was a bit odd. The referee’s assessor, Gary Willard, and the match delegate, former West Ham midfielder Geoff Pike, were happy as well. Willard gave me a strong hint that he wanted me to report Chelsea for the incident when I had been surrounded by an angry group of players and both Willard and Pike made comments about Terry looking guilty, rather than surprised, when he was sent off.

I did not have an inkling that a firestorm of controversy was about to erupt. Out of the blue, Chelsea attacked me from three directions. First – and I probably should have seen this one coming – manager José Mourinho purported to be mystified by the disallowed Drogba ‘goal’ and by Terry’s sending-off. He told reporters, ‘I don’t understand why John Terry was sent off. I cannot find a reason for that. The team gave everything and played high-pressure football. We had chances with one player less. But Mr Poll goes home, and nobody can ask him about the reasons behind his decisions. I never ask referees about their decisions because they always have an excuse. So why should I ask him? He would say something like “Didier Drogba was free and had a clean header but somebody thirty metres away made a foul.” They always have an excuse for their decisions.’

There was some seriously flawed logic there. He seemed to think that I should have allowed Drogba’s ‘goal’ to stand because Terry’s foul was some distance away. That is self-evidently nonsense. On that basis, if someone thumps one of Mourinho’s men a long way from the ball, the referee should take no action.

But Ashley Cole, who provided the second prong of the attack on me, made the same daft mistake in his reasoning. He said, ‘Sure, JT got involved with someone on the edge of the box but it was nowhere near the ball.’ So what, Ashley? It was a foul. It occurred before Drogba headed the ball. It was not a goal – and it should not have been a controversy.

Cole made a much more damaging allegation about me, however. He said I had told Chelsea, ‘You need to be taught a lesson.’ He said that Frank Lampard had told him I had said that. Most newspapers took Cole’s word at face value. The implication was that I was deliberately harsh on Chelsea. Some reporters jumped to the conclusion that I was trying to inflict my own punishment on Chelsea for the way they had harangued Italian referee Stefano Farina in the midweek game against Barcelona.

There was only one problem with that theory. I had not said anything about teaching Chelsea a lesson.

I merely said the sort of thing I had said to players for twenty-six years. During the time when Chelsea were haranguing me about the Ballack booking, I said to Lampard, ‘Your team are losing their discipline. You need to get it sorted out or I will have to.’ There is a profound difference between what I said and how Cole reported Lampard’s version of what I said. I had urged Lampard to calm down his teammates. I had not implied some sort of vendetta on my part.

But the newspapers had their headlines. Some went with the angle that I had told the England captain to ‘F* * * off’. Some were more excited about my determination to teach Chelsea a lesson. Neither was true.

The third attack on me had not happened yet, but another blow did land and hurt. During the following week the FA told me they were not taking any action against Chelsea for surrounding me and haranguing me because I had not been intimidated. In other words, because I had been strong enough to deal with the incident without looking terrified, Chelsea were going to get away with it.

With that decision, the FA let down every referee in the country – especially the teenagers taking charge of parks matches. The FA signalled to every team in the land that it was perfectly acceptable for an angry mob to surround refs and scream in their faces.

The FA had let me down as well. That season, like never before, I needed their backing. I had made a big mistake at the World Cup and, if I was going to get back my credibility, the FA needed to stop players disputing every decision I made and undermining me by crowding around in a querulous gang.

I asked, in passing, whether Ashley Cole was going to be charged over what he had accused me of saying. The response from the FA astounded me. I was told, ‘We need to investigate the matter thoroughly before making a decision.’ So, instead of supporting me, the FA were investigating me. They thought I might actually have said that I wanted to teach Chelsea a lesson. I felt hugely let down.

Then came attack number three from Chelsea. It was launched by Terry himself in an interview with Chelsea’s own television channel that was gleefully picked up by all the newspapers. He said, ‘On the pitch Graham Poll said to me that it [the second yellow card] was for the barge on Hossam Ghaly where I just kept running. Then, after the game, he then said to me it was for the fall when me and Ledley King fell. So, you know, he’s obviously had a look at it or got people to look at it and decided that’s probably the best option for him as it covers every angle for him.’

This time the clear and utterly unfounded allegation was that I had changed my story and had produced a deliberately falsified account. The impression the England captain was trying to create was that he should not have been sent off. There had only been a minor collision and, on thinking about it later, the referee had changed his story to blame a different incident.

If Terry genuinely believed that is what happened he was completely mistaken. I had not changed my story at all. On the field I had not given Terry any explanation about why I was sending him off. That was why he came to ask me about it afterwards in my changing room. The account I gave him in the changing room was the only version of events I described for him. It was the only version there was, because it was the truth.

Perhaps Cole and Terry had simply forgotten that all the match officials were wearing microphones and earpieces throughout the game. Doh! Mine was an ‘open mike’. The two assistants and the fourth official had heard everything I had said. They had not heard me say that Chelsea needed to be taught a lesson. They had not heard me tell Terry to ‘F*** off’. They had not heard me say to Terry on the field why I was sending him off. They did not hear any of those things because I had not said them.

There were TV cameras as well as the microphone, and so I was able to say, in an email to the FA about Terry’s accusation, ‘There were no words exchanged at the time of his dismissal or indeed anything from the moment he fouled his opponent, Mr King, until after the final whistle. The video of the match shows this clearly.’

I sent off my email and waited for the FA to deal with the matter. It was to prove a long and frustrating wait.

CHAPTER FOUR

Big Time Charlie

I was outraged by the accusations by Cole and Terry, appalled that newspapers took them at face value and devastated that the Football Association investigated me. The biggest hurt was caused by the FA.

In fact, I don’t blame Chelsea, their manager or their players for haranguing me on the pitch or the verbal assaults off it. They were encouraged to do and say what they did because, time and time again, they had seen the FA do sweet f.a.

As far as the accusations were concerned, I knew the evidence would exonerate me. I also suspected that the Chelsea players would back down. To persevere with the allegation that I had said they needed to be taught a lesson would have alleged also that both assistant referees and the fourth official were involved in a conspiracy of lies with me.

Yet there was no word from the FA of any charges against Chelsea. The affair was still being investigated. I was still being investigated. They had the reports from four match officials they were supposed to trust. What more did their investigation need? I am not sure I can convey how vulnerable that made me feel; vulnerable and betrayed. How was I supposed to command the respect of players in other matches if allegations about my integrity were not rebutted? If the FA doubted me, how was I supposed to repair my fractured credibility?

I asked to be taken off the Carling Cup tie between Everton and Arsenal on the Wednesday because I felt so downcast and devalued. Looking back, missing that game would have sent out the wrong message. It would have created the impression that I had been suspended because of the Chelsea accusations. So it was perhaps fortunate that I was told that I had to go ahead and referee the fixture at Everton. I would have to tough it out. Perhaps it would be a nice, incident-free match. Not a chance.

In the twentieth minute Everton appealed for a penalty when Andy Johnson was tackled. It looked like a fair challenge to me, so I span away from the incident to follow play. I was aware that James McFadden was chasing after me but I was concentrating on the game. Then, as clear as anything, I heard McFadden shout, ‘You f***ing cheat!’

His team-mate, Tim Cahill, was near me and grabbed my arm. He said, ‘Don’t do it, Pollie.’ Cahill knew, McFadden knew and I knew what the Scot had said.

Whatever nonsense people say about me seeking controversy, I ask you to believe that the last thing I needed that night was more back page headlines. But McFadden had run thirty or forty yards to call me a cheat. It was not a spontaneous, heat-of-the-moment remark. Other players had heard it.

Referees hate being called a cheat. The whole foundation of refereeing is that you make honest decisions. You want to get those decisions right – you strive to get them right – but if there are mistakes, they are honest mistakes. I would have betrayed my profession if I had not sent off McFadden. So I did.

The ground erupted. It had to be a home player, didn’t it? And Everton manager David Moyes proved a major disappointment. Before the match, during my warm-up, he came over and said, ‘Don’t let them get to you, Graham. We all know you are the best referee.’ Yet after the match he staged a theatrical stunt at the media conference. He produced McFadden, who denied that he had called me a cheat. Everton’s case was that the player had said ‘f***ing shite’ rather than ‘f***ing cheat’. So that was all right then! But I know what he said.

Moyes told the assembled media, ‘Once again we have a situation where Graham Poll says a player says one thing and the player says he said something different. Who do you believe?’ That ‘once again’ comment was a reference to the Chelsea accusations.

After reviewing the match report – which included the explanation that McFadden had been dismissed for calling me a cheat – Everton decided not to appeal against the decision. So I was once again exonerated.

The assessor, Mike Reed, thought I’d had a ‘brilliant’ game. But, when I got back to my hotel, a group of Everton fans did not share that view. By then they had probably heard the Everton version of McFadden’s abuse, so they spat out some expletives of their own at me.

Next morning, when I turned on my mobile, there was a text message and a voicemail from Keith Hackett, manager of the referees’ Select Group. He was in Switzerland at a UEFA meeting. He had instructed me to call him urgently ‘about a financial irregularity regarding car sponsorship’.

A what? I could not believe it. I phoned UEFA and demanded that they dragged Keith out of his meeting. With mounting paranoia, I shouted at my boss. I yelled, ‘What the hell is going on, Keith? Is this being pushed out by a club? Where is all this coming from?’ He asked me if I had a sponsored car. I said, ‘Why do you need to ask that? I have my own car and my bank statement can show that I pay for that car every month.’

He said, ‘The Premier League press office have been phoned by a paper. The paper say they have a copy of an agreement showing that you have a sponsored car …’

I replied, ‘Point one: I don’t have a sponsored car. Point two: is it wrong if I did? Dermot Gallagher has one with the sponsor’s name across the side. Keith, somebody is trying to do me, turn me over.’

My boss went back to his meeting and I made a mental tally of recent events. I had been maligned by two Chelsea players, one of whom was the England captain. I had sent off an Everton player for questioning my integrity. His manager had questioned my veracity. I had been abused by supporters. I had been accused of some sort of financial impropriety. Oh, and I had been betrayed by the Football Association. All in just under four days.

At breakfast I read a report of the Everton game in The Guardian. The writer said that if I was offended by being called a cheat, I needed to get out more. I did not read any other reports but I now know they were scathing. The Mirror’s headline was ‘POLL POTTY’ and, in a later edition of The Guardian, Dominic Fifield came to this considered appraisal of me:

Already under investigation by the Football Association after allegations made against him by Chelsea’s disgruntled players in defeat on Sunday, his penchant for the theatrical is stripping him of credibility, his apparent desire to be the centre of attention – he was signing autographs prior to kick-off – unhelpful when he attempts to officiate. He would argue, with some justification, that it was McFadden’s folly which prompted the red card, but it appears that he revels in the notoriety such controversy affords him.

Other reports pointed out that I was already in the spotlight over my ‘much-criticized decision’ to dismiss John Terry. Some reminded readers that Terry said he had been given two different versions of why he was shown a second yellow card and that team-mate Ashley Cole accused me of bias against his club. Very few reports bothered to add that I had denied the claims of Terry and Cole.

In the car on the way home, I turned on the radio – to hear a phone-in caller repeat the comment that I had indulged in an autograph-signing session before the previous night’s game. The caller said, ‘He’s Mr Big Time Charlie, Mr Superstar who loves the attention.’

The truth, if anyone is bothered about the truth, is that before the game and before the ground was open to the public, there were three or four lads by one of the dug-outs who were with one of the club officials. They asked for my autograph. I obliged. If I had not, then presumably I would have been a Big Time Charlie who thinks he is too important to bother with kids who want his autograph.

On the way home, as I drove off the M6 toll road and pulled onto the M42, I looked at my eyes in the rear-view mirror because I knew they were brimming up with tears. Alone with my feelings, my emotions had spilled over.

In any other period of my refereeing career, I would have been angered by the accusations and understandably upset by the crescendo of criticism, but I cannot imagine they would have made me tearful. Now, however, five rough days had brought confirmation of a truth I had been avoiding: I had fallen out of love with refereeing. Not football – I still loved football – but I no longer loved refereeing. That realization brought a dead weight of sadness.

Refereeing had been so important to me for half my life, but I had refereed the Everton game really well and yet still had my competence and integrity doubted. It was clear to me that my credibility was gone forever. The disillusionment and deep, deep disappointment I felt as I drove home from the city of Liverpool was intense and oppressive.

Earlier that week, on the morning of the Spurs–Chelsea game, Patrick Barclay had written a short little tribute to me as a ‘PS’ at the bottom of his column in the Sunday Telegraph. The brief article finished with two points which meant the world to me. I am not sure journalists realize how their words can hurt or heal. But, after referring to my three-card trick at the World Cup, Paddy wrote:

Two thoughts arise. The first is that I’d rather have a referee who makes an isolated technical mistake than one as weak as Stefano Farina proved in Barcelona last Tuesday. The other is that if England’s players, many of whom did far worse than Poll in Germany, were ever to show half the character he has displayed since the resumption of hostilities, they might yet win something.

I have chosen to reprint the piece of flattery from the Sunday Telegraph because of the contrast between the kind picture it paints of me and the state I was in a few days later, on that journey home from Liverpool. If Patrick Barclay had seen me close to tears in my car, he might have had less praise for my strength of character; or, I suppose, he might have understood how difficult season 2006/07 really was.

Soon after I reached my home, a woman reporter from The Times arrived at my door to ask some questions. I had given one interview, to Sky TV, in Germany after my Stuttgart misadventure and had taken a vow of silence since. So I asked The Times woman to leave. Unable to write anything much about me, she wrote some spiteful things about Tring. I was upset about that, because the people of the town had been very supportive.

It had not been a very good week so far. The next morning, Friday, a letter arrived, addressed on the envelope to ‘G Poll, Tring’. That was all. My instinct told me it would be abuse from a Chelsea supporter or a very quick Everton fan. I told myself not to open it, but I did. It was from a lad named Thomas from an address in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. It said:

Dear Mr

Poll I am typing this on my dad’s computer. I am training to be a ref and am 14-years-old. I watched the game on Sunday and thought you had a good game. I think it is wrong for players to question referees decisions and I think it was god [sic] for you to tell the Chelsea players they needed to learn a lesson on discipline. It is not just them it is players from all teams. Some-times I think refs need to be stronger and tell these players these sort of things. Anyway got to go because my dad wants the internet. I haven’t got your address but I know you live in Tring so I hope you get this. I am reffing game on Sunday and will try and be like you.

Interestingly, even this young man assumed I had told Chelsea they needed to be taught a lesson. But his letter reminded me that I owed a responsibility to all the referees in the entire football pyramid. My responsibility to them was not to be broken or cowed by false allegations. Thomas cannot have known the positive effect his letter had on me. I wrote back to him, enclosing some refereeing ‘goodies’.

A little later that day, I headed back to the North-West to stay overnight ahead of my Saturday fixture: Manchester City versus Newcastle. The match was going to be live on Sky at lunchtime and they were billing it as, ‘Graham Poll’s next game’.

Somewhere between Stoke and Manchester, as I sat in the stationary queue of traffic which seems mandatory on the M6, I was telephoned by Brian Barwick, the chief executive of the Football Association. He wanted to draw my attention to some mildly supportive comment pieces in some newspapers. He said, ‘I hear you have been thinking about possibly giving up. Well, I hope you have been reading the more positive press coverage today.’

All my anger and frustration at his organization exploded. I told him how disappointed I was that Chelsea had not been charged with intimidation – a signal that it was all right to mob referees. I was doubly disappointed that nobody at Chelsea had been charged with anything for making allegations about my integrity. And I told him it was an absolute disgrace that the FA themselves had decided to investigate me and then had let that investigation drag on.

I said, ‘It is because the FA is not strong with people who say things about referees, and do these things to referees, that James McFadden believes it is OK to call me a cheat.

‘You, the FA, should have backed me straight away after the Tottenham v Chelsea game, or conducted a very quick inquiry. Then you, as chief executive of the Football Association, should have held a press conference saying it is wrong to question the integrity of referees.

‘You should have done that – not for me, but for every referee in the country. But you didn’t and so there will be 27,000 referees going out this weekend knowing that they cannot rely on the support of the Football Association. When a referee takes firm and correct action you don’t support him.’

Barwick huffed and puffed but didn’t know what to say. My final comment to him was a question. I asked, ‘How on earth do you expect me to go out and referee a football match tomorrow?’

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, also telephoned me and I asked him the same question. Scudamore said, ‘You will go out tomorrow and referee brilliantly as you always do.’

I responded, ‘And you take that for granted. You think that just happens. You have no idea how difficult that is – not just for me but all referees, given the scrutiny we are under. This is the hardest it has ever been to referee well in the Premiership. It won’t get easier and it is not pleasant any more.’

As soon as I reached the City of Manchester Stadium, I was dogged by a Sky TV crew. The cameraman followed my every step as I went inside and again later as I checked the pitch. But the game between City and Newcastle went off without a goal or controversy. The assembled media pack was greatly disappointed. I was delighted.

CHAPTER FIVE

No Defence from John Terry

The Chelsea affair was dragging on. I telephoned FA headquarters at Soho Square every day to check if there was any progress. I wanted the cloud of suspicion over me dispersed. I talked to Graham Noakes, the FA’s Director of Football Administration and Refereeing, or to Tarik Shanel in the FA’s Compliance Department. Every day the answer was the same: the investigation was ‘ongoing’.

Why? My report, and those of the other match officials, had been submitted within twenty-four hours of the game. Why, after all this time, had they not supported their four officials? I knew that the Compliance Department had compiled a full video sequence of Terry leaving the pitch. It confirmed that he had said nothing to me and that I had said nothing to him. The Chelsea and England captain’s version was clearly wrong. Yet the FA seemed reluctant to conclude their inquiry. Did they not want to charge the England captain?

By the evening of Friday, 17 November – twelve days after the match at Tottenham – I’d had enough waiting. I telephoned Graham Noakes at the FA and threatened to pull out of the following day’s game (Reading versus Charlton) and said that unless there was some action on the inquiry I would give a story to a newspaper telling them of my disgust with the football authorities. I would say that the FA had failed every referee in the country. After all, that is exactly what they had done.

Just making my double warning endangered my career. If I had actually carried out either threat, then who knows what would happened. The authorities find it a lot easier to sack a referee than to back him.

I did referee Reading’s game against Charlton, but I should not have – I was terrible. My confidence was shot to pieces. The FA knew I would go through with the other threat if necessary. I would definitely take my story to a newspaper because I’d had enough.

Finally, on 30 November, twenty-five days after the Spurs–Chelsea game, the FA published a statement on their website. It said that John Terry had been charged with improper conduct for making his allegation that I had changed my story about his sending-off. The rest of the FA statement is worth reporting because it tells you all you need to know about that organization. It read:

Graham Poll has also been cleared by The FA of saying anything inappropriate towards Chelsea players during the same match regarding their discipline. Responses sought from Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Chelsea FC and the match officials confirm that Poll did not say that Chelsea needed “to be taught a lesson”. There will be no action against any parties on this matter. Chelsea manager José Mourinho has been reminded of his responsibilities for media comments related to Poll’s performance in the same match and asked to use the relevant official channels to give feedback on the performance of referees. He will not face any formal disciplinary action.

Once again, I was vindicated. I had not said that Chelsea needed to be taught a lesson. I had been cleared. Cole, however, was not punished at all for glibly making the accusation, nor was Mourinho punished for suggesting that I was incompetent and that I did not care. The Chelsea manager had been ‘reminded of his responsibilities’. That was telling him.

Terry had fourteen days to respond to the charge. Initially Chelsea indicated that he would request a personal hearing. Chelsea normally hire top barristers for disciplinary hearings and it seemed they were gearing themselves up for another fight with authority, but then on Monday, 8 January, more than two months after the match, Terry – or someone on his behalf – contacted the FA to withdraw the request for a personal hearing and to admit the charge. The England captain’s admission was an acceptance that his version of events was inaccurate.

The next day the FA held their hearing, using only written submissions. Terry was fined £10,000 – about a morning’s wages. That was telling him as well. However, the FA issued an unprecedented statement. It said: ‘We were extremely disappointed the integrity of Poll was questioned. We note the late admission to the charge and the excellent previous disciplinary record of John Terry. But we are also disappointed that no public apology had been forthcoming for his admitted improper conduct.’

It was a limp, puny condemnation. But it was still a condemnation of the England captain by the Football Association and so it was, in its own way, remarkable.

Ashley Cole had blithely sworn at me and then made shocking accusations about me, but at least his remarks had been straight after the game when he was steamed up about losing to Spurs. By contrast, Terry had produced his inaccurate allegations two days after the match, when he had had time to think about what he wanted to say about his sending-off.

His account had made damaging allegations about what I had said. Video recordings disproved his account – and yet he simply kept quiet. He simply let the FA case against him proceed and paid the paltry fine. He did not apologize for his account, even though it questioned the integrity of a referee and added to the corrosive criticism of officials which erodes the entire game.

David Beckham, Terry’s predecessor as England captain, demonstrated privately to me that he is a decent, caring human being. By sending me a message of support in Germany and then telephoning as soon as I got home, he behaved as I think an England captain should.

John Terry had his version of events proven false and then was not big enough to apologize or even acknowledge publicly what he had done.

You will make your own judgement about whether that behaviour befits an England captain. I know what I think.

CHAPTER SIX

Stop the Ride

By the time the Football Association’s disciplinary wheels started to move to exonerate me, Julia and I were on our way to Lavenham, in Suffolk, for a break. But there was no break from recognition.

We were pulled over by a police car after a slightly dodgy overtaking manoeuvre but the officers really stopped me because they realized it was me. They let us continue on our journey after they told me they were Ipswich fans – and after I pointed out that I had refereed their club’s 9–0 home defeat by Manchester United in 1995.

After checking in at the hotel, we went for a walk but a white van stopped and the driver wanted to ask us for directions to somewhere or other. He climbed out of his van and the first thing he said was, ‘It’s Graham Poll.’

Then, that night, we ordered drinks in a pub and a guy in his mid-thirties said, ‘I’ll get those … it is Graham isn’t it? I feel for you. You’ve had a rough time. I’ve started refereeing this season and I base my game on yours. So I’m shit as well.’

Next, at dinner in our hotel, a couple at a nearby table started talking about me loudly enough for me to hear. And finally, after signing the bill but then deciding I wanted to add to it by buying a bottle of wine, I was told that two waiters had taken the bill because they wanted to copy my signature.

I was not quite sure what that was about. But I was sure that Julia and I would never ‘get away from it all’ while I remained controversial Graham Poll, the referee who made the huge mistake in the World Cup. I started to understand that the 2006/07 season should be my last as a referee.

There is no upper age limit for referees in England now, thanks to anti-age discrimination laws. But FIFA referees must retire from the international list at the end of the calendar year in which they reach 45. So I would come off the international list in 2008, and I had always intended to stop refereeing altogether that year. The plan was that I could either quit after the 2008 European Championships or at the end of that year. I would not continue refereeing in England without the international badge. I had worked so hard to earn it.

After the 2006 World Cup, I knew I would not be going to Euro 2008. But once I had decided not to quit there and then, I still had 2008 in my mind as my retirement year. That meant at least two more seasons and possibly two and a bit. But as the first of those two seasons unfolded, and I became dispirited and disillusioned, I began to think that I would hang up my whistle – as the cliché goes – in the summer of 2007.

In November 2006 I went to see Graham Barber – the ex-referee and a good, good friend – at his place in Spain and he said, ‘Get through this season and then see how you feel.’ He told me I should not let ‘them’ beat me. By them, he meant the unsupportive football authorities. But, increasingly in the next few months, I began to suspect that I was already beaten.

I had come home from the World Cup with a terrible, mortal wound. To keep going for two more seasons, as I wanted, I needed support from the FA. Yet they allowed my integrity to be questioned. Instead of supporting me, the FA just looked on as my wound was ripped open and made worse.

In December 2006, I refereed AC Milan against Lille in the Champions League. As the teams were waiting in the tunnel before the tie, Dario Simic, Milan’s Croatian midfielder, came over to me. I had sent him off on that fateful night in Stuttgart. In Milan, Simic looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘I am so sorry for what happened. We knew Simunic had already been booked. We should have told you. I am so sorry.’

Lille won 2–0. After the game, Simic came over to me again. He repeated. ‘I am sorry. Please accept my shirt.’ I did not know whether to laugh or cry, hug him or hit him. In the end, I just accepted the shirt – in the spirit in which it had been offered.

Later, Simunic promised to send me a shirt as a memento of the night we made history. I accepted that gesture as well with as much good grace as I could muster. But there could be no closure about Stuttgart. Every time I was involved in a refereeing controversy, it coloured people’s perception of what had happened and was usually mentioned in the media reports.

Yet one game gave me a glimpse of how things might be different for me, and for all referees – if all managers were as honest as Stuart Pearce. In the very next match I reffed after going to Milan, I red-carded Manchester City’s Bernardo Corradi in the final minutes of a defeat at Old Trafford. I had already cautioned him and then, in my opinion, he ‘dived’ to try to win a penalty. I cautioned him again and so sent him off.

My decision was widely praised, but only because Pearce, the City manager, backed me and not his player. Pearce said, ‘I have no complaints about the sending-off. Bernardo went down a little bit too easily and I am not like the other nineteen managers, who would sit here and give you a load of cock and bull about it.’

Great. That is what you want to hear when you have sent someone off. How could the fans or the press have a go at me when Pearce had not? That lifted my spirits, and that game at Old Trafford was followed by a run of matches which went well. But then my last two assignments of 2006 brought two more rows.

Late in the Charlton versus Fulham match, on 27 December, assistant referee Steve Artis flagged for handball by Charlton’s Djimi Traore. I was in no position to see, so I backed my assistant. Fulham equalized from the free-kick. TV replays showed it was not handball and so Charlton, who were battling to avoid relegation, felt robbed. After the game, Charlton manager Alan Pardew complained, ‘In the last few minutes of the match, when my players have forgotten what it’s like to win a game of football, I expect them to be nervous and make silly mistakes. I don’t expect match officials to make similar mistakes.’

The point, surely, is that officials do make mistakes, exactly like players. It was Artis’s first season but I wrote in my official report that I would be happy for him to run the line in any game I refereed. He had been outstanding until that one, human, error.

Then, with four days of 2006 remaining, I was fourth official at Vicarage Road for Watford against Wigan. In the second half, with the score at 1–1, torrential rain turned the pitch into a paddy field. Steve Tanner, who was in charge of his second Premier League game, asked my advice but it was still his decision to abandon the game. It was the correct decision, as well. But it was not the weather or even the ref who got the blame. According to the many media reports that highlighted and criticized my involvement, it was me. When I raised a glass on New Year’s Eve, the toast was, ‘Good riddance to 2006.’

January was like December, with ups and downs. I believe the expression is ‘a rollercoaster of emotions’, but the truth is that, by then, I knew I wanted to get off the ride. That thought became sharper and more definite in January and soon it was an irrevocable decision. There were still plenty of ‘ups’ but they were never sufficient to make me change my mind. The 2006/07 season would be my last.

On the last day of January, I was appointed to a Chelsea match for the first time since John Terry had made up that story about me. The Premier League had waited and waited, but we all knew that I had to officiate with Chelsea again.

Terry was injured and not playing. But as I was warming up, he walked past me and made a small gesture of acknowledgement – a slight nod and a partial raising of his open palm. Was it to say, ‘Hello’? Was it to say, ‘Sorry’? Who knows?

The other Chelsea players started the game by ignoring me completely – not rudely, but just not indulging in any of the usual banter or comments. Then, slowly, things began to get back to normal. At one point, when Ashley Cole was being put on a stretcher, Didier Drogba said to me, ‘Ignore all of them. We know you are a good referee.’

By ‘all of them’ he could have meant the crowd, who were abusing me, or the media or even the other Chelsea players. I didn’t know what he meant, and it didn’t matter. He was just trying to encourage me. With that, he went to give me a ‘high five’. I responded instinctively and we slapped palms. I dare say I got more criticism for that – for being over-familiar with players and a bit too ‘show biz’, but, for me, it was a lovely moment. There were other good moments too, but by then I knew I was going to finish.

When I had decided, after Germany, to keep going, it was the right decision but for the wrong reason. I had thought, ‘You could get a Champions League Final, Pollie,’ but that was the wrong type of motivation. You can’t referee just because of the possibility of one match – not least because, as happened in 2005, 2006 and 2007, English teams might reach the Champions League Final which would mean I could not referee it. Carrying on purely for the chance of a Champions League Final was the wrong motivation for another reason as well. It was wrong because the only inducement that really works is that you love it – and I no longer did.

I was still refereeing well, I believe. Certainly I was still making big calls without worrying about anything other than whether I thought they were right. In February, Tottenham’s Robbie Keane scored twice against Bolton, but then he stopped a shot going into the Spurs goal with his arm. To me, it was a deliberate act. So it was handball. So it was denying the opposing team a goal. So it was a sending-off. Robbie said, ‘On my life, it was an accident,’ but I went with what I believed I had seen. That was the only way I could referee. So when Robbie said, ‘I’ve never been sent off,’ I replied, ‘You have now.’

An injury prevented my refereeing Liverpool–Manchester United and I was really disappointed – because it would have been my last time in charge of one of English football’s big, set-piece fixtures. Why did I care if I no longer loved refereeing? Well, I suppose that I was noting the milestones as I neared my finish.

If I had any lingering doubts about finishing – if there were any tiny doubts loitering anywhere in my mind – they were eradicated by another game, another fresh set of accusations and a reporter and a photographer appearing on my doorstep.

The match, on 9 April, Easter Monday, was Charlton against Reading at The Valley – or relegation-threatened Charlton, as the media felt obliged to call them, at home to the season’s surprise success story.

In the first half, Charlton’s Alexandre Song Billong committed a bad foul, and so I booked him. At half-time, Alan Pardew, who had been so upset with an assistant referee’s decision the last time I had been to The Valley, came to my changing room. In theory, managers are only allowed in the referee’s room thirty minutes after the finish of the match and, normally, I would have kept him out. But he was in before I realized it was him and, besides, lots of managers make comments at half-time, usually in the tunnel on the way off. Arsène Wenger does it, for instance, and so does José Mourinho. Most of them do. Whether they are just getting something off their chests, or hoping to influence you in the second half, it doesn’t matter. You are not going to be influenced any way.

Pardew said, ‘All I want to say is be careful with Song. Don’t send him off.’

I said, ‘Alan, give me some credit,’ by which I meant that I would referee properly. I was not seeking to send off Song, or anyone else.

He said, ‘Thanks’ and headed off.

In any game of football, if a player has one yellow card and then commits a foul which is not worth a second caution, you call him to you and make it clear to him – and to everyone in the ground – that it’s ‘one more and you are off’. You pointedly indicate the tunnel, to make it clear, ‘That is where you will be going if you are not careful.’ The reason you do that is to sell your next decision. You are telling him, and telling the crowd, what might happen. Then, if it does happen, everybody accepts it.

So, in the second half, when Song committed a foul which was not worth a second yellow, I went through that whole warning routine with him. Soon after that, Pardew took Song off and replaced him with a substitute.

I went home after the game, content with another job well done. But, unbeknown to me, at his press conference, Pardew said, ‘At half-time I went to see Graham Poll and I said “I need to have some signal if he is getting close to being sent off.” He sent me that signal so Alex had to come off. It was full credit to Graham. That’s the sort of refereeing you need.’

Pardew was trying to praise me. His recollection of our conversation was a little different to mine, but not significantly so. But the media took his comments to mean that he and I had concocted some secret deal. The implication was that I had favoured Charlton.

The next day, when I was sitting in my study, I saw two men pitch up at my front door: a little chap with a notebook and another bloke with a camera. Julia went to the door. They told her they were from the Mirror. She told them I was busy. So they went to wait in their two separate cars.

Next, two football reporters from another newspaper telephoned me separately. One admitted, when I asked him, that it was only a story because it was me and because of Stuttgart. The other writer from that newspaper, a friend, said he needed a bit of information so that he could ‘kill’ the story.

I thought it was all unbelievable. I had refereed the game really, really well and yet I had headlines in the papers and people on my doorstep. There had been no clandestine deal, no special signal for Alan Pardew. Yet newspapers and their readers were quite ready to believe that I would do something partisan. That assumption – that I would favour one side – was what hurt.

One reason for that assumption was that people are always ready to assume the worst about any referee, but another reason for the assumption in this particular case was because it was me – the bloke who had messed up in Stuttgart. I’d made a big mistake in Germany. I was fallible. I could easily get something badly wrong at Charlton. That was the reasoning, and that was why I had to pack up that season.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Despicable Outburst

I kept my decision to retire a secret for as long as possible. If I had announced it straightaway then pundits would have speculated that it was because of Stuttgart. They would have been right, but I did not need Stuttgart discussed again.

I told my family, of course, and the youngest member of the clan almost gave the game away. Harry, my little son, had a ‘secrets book’ at school. It was part of his school’s anti-bullying policies. If a child was bullied, he or she could write about it in the secrets book. Harry wrote in his book, ‘I can’t tell anyone but my dad is going to stop being a referee.’

I did a rather better job of keeping my secret, although it caused a few problems. For instance, I knew that I would not be refereeing any more international matches after that last season, 2006/07, and I knew that my final total would be close to one hundred. As someone who always set himself targets, I thought it would be excellent to reach that landmark, but, of course, UEFA did not know that my career was ending and were in no hurry to give me match number 100.

I reached ninety-eight before Christmas, but then there was a long, unexpected gap between appointments. When match ninety-nine arrived, it was a UEFA Cup clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Benfica in Paris – the only major European city in which I had not refereed. That was great, but I began to wonder if I would actually reach three figures.

I was not appointed for any of the March internationals and so I spoke to the FA and asked if there was a problem. They said, ‘No’ and that I was going to get an international in June. They thought that was good news for me. I could not tell them that it meant I would either have to delay my retirement or accept that it would be ninety-nine and out.

Then my friend Yvan Cornu, UEFA’s referees’ manager, hinted that I might not have to wait until June for game 100, and I started trying to work out what he meant. Three English clubs reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, which ruled out an English referee. The first legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals were also out because I was speaking at a dinner with Pierluigi Collina – he was on the UEFA referees’ committee by then, and I assumed that he would not want to mess up the plans for the dinner. That left only the second legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals.

I wanted family and friends with me at my 100th and last international game, and so, forewarned by Yvan Cornu’s card-marking, I investigated flights and hotels for the two UEFA Cup second legs – in Seville and Bremen.

I have told you all these arcane details to try to capture both the anticipation and frustration of waiting and hoping for an international appointment. It is all a bit cloak-and-dagger and if you make any assumptions about your own appointment, UEFA are likely to take the game away from you.

I waited impatiently for notification of game number 100. When it was announced, it was Seville – the match between two Spanish clubs, Sevilla and Osasuna. I am sure Bremen can be a lovely place, but I was very pleased by the news. Even if I had scripted it myself – setting out exactly how I wanted my one hundredth, and final, international match to unfold – I could not have improved on the actual events. Throughout this book I am trying to answer the question, ‘Why would anyone want to be a referee?’ The semi-final, second leg of the UEFA Cup provides one answer.

For Dutch referee Eric Braamhaar, the first leg did not go so well. He tore a calf muscle and there was a seven-minute delay before he was replaced by the fourth official. The only goal of the game was scored by Roberto Soldado of Osasuna, ten minutes into the second half.

I was at that dinner with Collina when the first leg was played, but I recorded the match and watched it when I arrived home in Tring, to pick up some pointers for the second leg. It was not difficult to glean what my game would be like because the theme of the first match was the mutual lack of respect between the two teams. The sub-plot was the frequency with which players went down unnecessarily, and stayed down, pretending to be hurt. I also saw Osasuna striker Savo Milosevic, the former Aston Villa player, appear to shove an opponent in the face out of sight of the referee. And at the finish there was a nasty mêlée. The second leg was going to be interesting then.

Peter Drury, the ITV commentator who was working at the first leg, lives in Berkhamsted, near Tring, and talked to me about some of the refereeing issues. He said, ‘I pity the poor so-and-so who has to referee the second leg.’

‘Thanks.’

He said, ‘It’s not you, is it?’

Knowing he could be trusted, I said, ‘Yup.’

My team for the second leg was Darren Cann and Roger East as assistants, with Mike Dean as fourth official. My other team was the family and friends who came to share my secret big occasion – Julia, my sister Susan, brother-in-law Tony, Rob Styles and Rob’s wife Liz. I told the assistants and fourth official that the reason for the suspiciously large contingent of family and friends was that it was game number 100.

In order for it to be a celebration, and not a wake, I had to have a decent match. The UEFA liaison officer warned us, ‘This is going to be a difficult game. These teams really don’t like each other.’ But I was up for it – I had ninety-nine international fixtures behind me and I had learned how to referee as a European instead of an Englishman. For example, on the Continent, when a player goes into a challenge with his studs showing, it is always a foul. In England, unless contact is made it is commonplace to play on.

Mind you, I had learned how to referee on the Continent the hard way – by being rubbish at one European game. That was another all-Spanish fixture, in November 1998: Real Sociedad versus Atletico Madrid in San Sebastián. I had a complete disaster, yet thought I had done well. I refereed as I would have done in England and ended up showing eleven yellows and two reds. But I was not in tune with Spanish football: the attitudes were different; the fouls were different. Consequently, the refereeing should have been different. I misread the game completely.

Spanish fans show their displeasure about refereeing decisions by waving white hankies. That night in San Sebastián there were 27,000 people in the stadium and probably 26,900 or so waved white hankies. The others must have forgotten theirs. It looked like a huge parachute had enveloped the stadium. We had to be smuggled out of the ground under a blanket that night.

That was in 1998. By May 2007 I was a better referee. But, because of the first leg, I was still anticipating that the second game would bring eight yellow cards at least and perhaps a couple of reds. On the morning of the match the representative of Sevilla came to me at the ground with a letter which did nothing to make me revise my forecast. The letter was written in English and couched in a very aggressive tone. It said, among other things, that Osasuna had disrupted the first leg by feigning injury and so Sevilla intended to ignore any apparent Osasuna injuries in the second leg. Sevilla would not kick the ball out and would not stop play if an Osasuna player was on the floor, looking injured. The letter asked me to tell Osasuna about Sevilla’s intention to play on. I was sure that if I read that letter out to Osasuna, it would only increase the enmity. Indeed, there might be some genuine injuries sustained before we even kicked off.

When the meeting with club representatives took place, without planning it in advance, I hit on the perfect thing to say. The Laws of the Game, I explained, made the safety of players the responsibility of the referee, not of the other players. I told the club representatives, truthfully, that in England we had adopted a new policy when players appeared injured. Neither side was expected to kick the ball out. Instead, the referee, and only the referee, decided when to stop play for an injury. I told the meeting that I intended to use that English policy.

Once the game kicked off, the first time someone went down and stayed down, I gave the free-kick but I stood over the player on the floor, smiled, offered him my hand for a handshake and pulled him up, still smiling. Players continued to hit the turf as if felled by snipers, but I repeated my performance three or four times: nice smile, handshake, pull him up.

I also completely discarded the diagonal system of refereeing – which I probably need to explain briefly here. The referee patrols the pitch in roughly a diagonal line. The two assistants patrol opposite halves of their touchline – from the goal-line to the halfway line. The idea is for the referee to keep the ball between him and one of the assistants.

The method of diagonal patrolling is used throughout football and I used it in most of my 1554 games – but not all of them. I discarded it if I thought I needed to keep closer to incidents and so I abandoned it that night because I was determined to keep on top of every incident. When I blew my whistle and the players looked around, I wanted to be only a few metres away.

My tactics meant a lot of running as well as a lot of smiling and a lot of shaking hands. I must have looked manic – but the approach worked. Players knew I was right behind them and they knew as well that I was giving fouls when appropriate. They realized I was not letting anyone stay down if he was not hurt, and so they soon stopped writhing about on the floor as if they had been the victims of heinous assaults.

I was totally on top of that game from start to finish. I let it flow, but I was utterly focused and completely ‘in the zone’ – as sportsmen and women from all sorts of disciplines say. In the entire ninety minutes, neither trainer came on once – not once.

Luis Fabiano scored for Sevilla from six yards after thirty-seven minutes to make the aggregate score 1–1 and we reached half-time without a single caution. The liaison officer was shocked but delighted. He called it an exceptional first half.

Dirnei Renato put Sevilla ahead with a clever, cushioned volley after fifty-three minutes, and although there was a tough period in the second half, when I had to take the names of five players in eleven minutes, the game needed those cautions. After I had administered them, it calmed down and flowed again.

Near the end, I was in one penalty area and the ball was heading for the other. I needed to get up the pitch. I had very little left physically, but I went for it. As I forced my tired limbs into a sprint, I pretended to whip myself, like a jockey urging on an old nag. In my earpiece I could hear both assistants and Mike Dean, the fourth official, laughing. Deano obviously thought I looked more like a train than a horse and I heard him telling me, ‘Put some more coal on, Pollie!’

I made it to the other end of the pitch, stood in the six-yard box to indicate a goal-kick and then immediately span and raced back to the halfway line. I glanced at the heart monitor on my wristwatch. It showed more than 100 per cent, which theoretically was not possible. It meant that I had got something extra out of my old system.

In the few moments remaining, I took several long looks around and stored the scene in my memory bank. It was a typical Spanish stadium, with big stands but no roofs. It was full. It was a tremendous occasion. I even managed to spot Julia in the packed stand. Magical. Memorable. When I whistled for full-time, I felt a rush of emotion. I could have ended my entire career at that moment and have been completely fulfilled.

The floodlights went off momentarily, which was interesting, but they came back on and we made our way off the pitch. The assistants and Deano hung back a bit, because they sensed this was a special moment for me and that I was emotional. But Christian Poulsen, Sevilla’s Danish international, gave me a hug and his shirt.

In domestic matches I just used an ordinary coin of the realm for the toss-up but in international matches I always used a special FIFA coin. My routine was that, after using it, I gave the FIFA coin to an assistant and he gave it to the fourth official for safe keeping. Then, at the end of the match, the fourth official always returned it to me – but not that night. In the dressing room after the game, Deano hugged me and started to return the coin. I said, ‘You keep it. It is yours. I won’t need it.’

That was how I told the officials that I was finishing at the end of that season. Deano said he had guessed, because of the intensity of my performance. He said, kindly, that nobody in Europe could referee better. I thanked the three guys for their help and support and stressed that it was not a moment of sadness for me: it was an occasion of celebration and achievement. I knew I had dredged up a performance which, in terms of fitness, decision-making, man management and concentration, belonged to the time, three or four years earlier, when I had been at my absolute peak. I knew that I would not be able to scale that peak again.

So the two teams – the team of officials and the team of family and friends – went for a meal and on to a tapas bar, which we left when they kicked us out at 4 am. UEFA rules prohibit family and friends from staying in the same hotel as the officials, but we had managed to find another (cheaper!) hotel very close by. So at 4.10 am I kissed Julia goodnight on the street. She went to her hotel and I went to mine.

I still did not want the night to end. Deano and the others came to my room and we talked about the game and about life until they gave up at 5 am. They left me with my thoughts and with the thirty or so cards from other English FIFA officials, past and present, which Deano had organized. The cards congratulated me on reaching 100 international matches. Those who sent them did not know that I was ‘declaring’ after reaching three figures, but their messages made a significant night even more unforgettable.

My next match, three days later, was a charity friendly: Tring Tornadoes Managers against Tring Tornadoes Under-16s. Attendance? About 350, or 44,650 fewer than in Seville.

Then, on Wednesday, 9 May 2007, I took charge of Chelsea against Manchester United. When I had been appointed for that fixture, it was expected that it would be the title decider. Chelsea, who had won the Premiership on each of the previous two seasons, trailed United for most of the 2006/07 campaign but hoped to leapfrog them to the top of the table in that crucial game at Stamford Bridge in May. It was expected to be an epic encounter, with the winner almost certainly taking the title.

Chelsea and Manchester United had also both won their FA Cup semi-finals, and had booked their places in the first Final at the rebuilt Wembley. That gave added significance to their League fixture, and for me to be awarded the appointment was confirmation that I was back at the top. I was number one again, which was important to me. The temptation to quit after Stuttgart had been very, very strong, but I did not want my career to end like that. I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could recover, re-focus and referee consistently well. The Stamford Bridge showdown between the top two teams in the Premiership was an affirmation that I had succeeded.

It would be a big match for two of my children as well. Gemma wanders around the house in a Manchester United shirt and Harry is always wearing his Chelsea shirt with ‘Lampard 8’ on the back. Gemma has her drinks in a Man U mug; Harry drinks out of a Chelsea cup. Fortunately, there is nothing in the rules about children not supporting teams that their dad referees!

The match, however, was not the titanic encounter that had been expected. The weekend before the game at Stamford Bridge, Manchester United won at Manchester City and Chelsea drew at Arsenal. United were the champions. Gemma was delighted, but my match at Stamford Bridge was rendered meaningless. That did not mean it would be easy to referee – in fact, with both teams picking fringe players who were out to prove themselves, I sensed it could be quite challenging. And sadly, José Mourinho decided it would be me a night for me to remember, although not with fondness.

FIFA referee Peter Prendergast, my mate from Jamaica, flew over with his wife to spend a couple of days with us in Tring and come with us to Stamford Bridge, because he was in on my secret and knew it was going to be one of my last games. In the referee’s lounge before the game – a cramped little room, with a couple of sofas, in the dressing rooms area at Chelsea – we were having a cup of tea when John Terry walked past. He saw the door open, glanced in and smiled. I smiled back and so, after doing whatever he had to do, he came back and entered the room.

It was the John Terry I knew from a few years back: friendly, polite, jokey. It was nice for Prendy to meet the England captain, and I appreciated JT making the effort to shake everyone’s hand and have a little chat. Yet once the game kicked off, he was snarling and swearing at me at every opportunity. Once, when I started to have a bit of banter with Joe Cole, JT said to his team-mate, ‘F*** him off, Coley. Don’t talk to him.’

The first twenty minutes of the game were turgid. Nothing happened. But I kept my concentration because I knew one incident could change the nature of the match – and that one incident proved to be Alan Smith’s foul tackle on Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel. I should have given Smithy a talking to, so that the Chelsea player’s sense of grievance was salved and he had a moment or two to calm down. Instead, and wrongly, I let Chelsea take a quick free-kick and did not talk to Smith. So John Obi Mikel was still wound up and, within moments, he clattered into Chris Eagles with a bad foul.

Sir Alex Ferguson jumped up out of his seat, stomped up the line and started demanding that the Chelsea player should be sent off. What Sir Alex didn’t shout was that if I red-carded the young Nigerian, he would miss the Cup Final – but I knew. The challenge by John Obi Mikel was rash, but he kept low and did not really ‘endanger the safety’ of Fergie’s player. So I showed the Chelsea player a yellow card and not a red.

Then I imposed a segment of tight refereeing. I whistled for every infringement, to close the game down, and let tempers cool. Sky television ‘expert’ Andy Gray told viewers, ‘Referees have been successful this season because they have played “advantage”, except for Graham Poll.’ That just shows you that you can know a lot about football without understanding anything at all about the job of referees.

Fergie must have stirred up his men at half-time because they started the second period with extra commitment and I had to caution two of them within about five minutes. Now, I did not want to make anyone miss the Cup Final. If someone punched an opponent, or did something really awful, then I would have sent him off, of course, and he would have been suspended for the Cup Final. But for situations which I could manage with cautions, I just gave cautions. To be scrupulously fair, I applied the same principle to fringe players who were unlikely to be involved in the Cup Final. In other words, I refereed both teams in exactly the same way, within the spirit of the game but with one eye on the Cup Final.

Was that the right thing to do? You can discuss it among yourselves. I believe it was exactly the right thing to do, although those ‘experts’ who always claimed that I deliberately sought out controversy might like to ponder my approach. If I had wanted controversy, I would have sent a couple of players off, preventing them playing at Wembley and made sure I was the centre of attention again. Yet the truth is that, throughout my career, I never made a decision because it was controversial. I frequently had to make decisions despite them being controversial. On that night in May 2007 at Stamford Bridge, I most definitely did not seek the confrontation with José Mourinho which erupted in the second half.

Chris Eagles had put in a bad tackle on Shaun Wright-Phillips but the Chelsea player got straight up, made no fuss and was not badly hurt. Working to the same principle that I had with the Chelsea players, I showed Eagles a yellow card instead of the red which his foul might have earned in another match. Mourinho was up and looking apoplectic in his technical area, as Sir Alex had been in the first half. That was OK. That was understandable. But what happened next was not acceptable.

The Chelsea manager made deliberate eye contact with me from twenty yards away and hurled abuse at me. I went towards him, not to ‘get on the camera’, as some claimed, ludicrously – the cameras were on me all the time – but to calm him down. I accepted that he was overwrought. After all, as pundits are wont to say, football is a passionate game, and most managers swear at the referee from time to time. Some of them – Sam Allardyce and David Moyes come to mind – can have a right go at a ref in the heat of the moment. Some, like Sir Alex Ferguson, have mellowed with age and consistent success. Arsène Wenger was very calm during successful seasons but entirely different during less successful seasons. So it is often all about stress.

Perhaps, throughout my career, I should have adopted a more stern approach. Perhaps, if referees had more backing from the FA, we would send managers off as soon as they tell us to f*** off. Then, perhaps, the routine abuse would stop.

Anyway, back in the real world, I approached José, assuming that he was just reacting to the pressure of his situation. I wanted to say, ‘José, you are under pressure, which I respect. But I would like you to respect me. Please be careful what you say to me.’ That is what I wanted to say and it is what I would have said to any other manager in that situation. Nineteen other Premiership managers would have responded to the calm man-management by apologizing, or at least by stopping swearing for a while.

But before I could say anything at all to Senhor Mourinho, he leant his head into me and produced a foul tirade which included a disgraceful personal comment about me and Sir Alex Ferguson. I was stunned. I was appalled. The inference was bad enough – that I was favouring Manchester United – but the way he expressed himself was just awful.

A test I often apply to myself is this: would I be happy explaining this behaviour to my family? Do you think José Mourinho would have been proud that night to have gone home and said to his wife and children, ‘Guess what I said to Graham Poll’?

Immediately after his despicable outburst, and before I could respond, he retreated to the back of the technical area and climbed into the seating behind the dugout, as if he had been sent off. Why did he do that? Perhaps José Mourinho thought he deserved to be ‘sent off’ that night and perhaps he wanted another dispute between Graham Poll and Chelsea.

I understand the pressure he was under and, as I say, other managers tried to apply psychological pressure and other managers swore at me without much restraint. I expected Mourinho, who is a fighter and wants to win everything, to go further than most – but not that far. Nobody in my twenty-seven seasons had used such deeply offensive language to insult and abuse me.

Yet, as I stood there, still in shock at the verbal assault I had suffered and looking on as Mourinho clambered into the seats behind the dugout, I thought to myself, ‘I do not need this hassle … I have got three games left after this. I do not want to spend weeks and possibly months after that waiting for a disciplinary hearing for José Mourinho, at which he will get the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.’ So I did not send him off. If that was a dereliction of my responsibility, then I apologize. But before you ask yourself whether I was wrong, ask two other questions. Firstly, was it right that José Mourinho should behave like that? Secondly, was it right that he was confident that he would get away with it – that any sanction imposed by the FA would not seriously inconvenience him or his club? I think it is a terrible indictment of the Football Association that a referee suffered that filthy defilement and yet concluded that there was no point in responding.

Because of events in my last season – John Terry’s inaccurate account of his sending off and José Mourinho’s grotesque verbal attack on me – there is a danger of this book turning into me versus Chelsea. But other referees will tell you similar stories about other clubs and, while I certainly think that the actions of JT and JM were unforgivable, I have no doubt that they were encouraged to behave as they did by the contemptibly timid Football Association.

So, as I stood there nonplussed by Mourinho’s outburst I felt it was simply not worth the grief to respond. It was not worth getting fifty foul letters to my home from Chelsea supporters saying that I was this and I was that – which I knew from past experience is what would have happened. Yes, I was a referee, but I was also a man with a young family. I did not want threatening letters arriving at my family home.

Steve Clarke, Chelsea’s assistant manager, thought I had sent off his boss, and accused me of doing it for the cameras and loving the attention.

John Terry made it his business to come over to the side of the field and give me an earful. His theme was identical to Steve Clarke’s – so much so that it made me wonder whether it was a key message that Chelsea had decided in advance. Was it a premeditated campaign? And did John Terry want a yellow card from me, to provoke more controversy and to suggest that our dispute earlier in the season was because of bias or animosity?

I used my lip-microphone to say to the fourth official, Mark Clattenburg, ‘Make it clear to Mr Mourinho that he has not been sent away from the technical area.’ I also told John Terry that I had not sent off his manager, but at this stage he wasn’t prepared to listen to anything I had to say.

I walked away and we finished the game. It was a draw. In his after-match media conference, José Mourinho was asked about what had happened with me. He said, ‘I was telling Mr Poll a couple of things I have had in my heart since the Tottenham game at White Hart Lane. But it was nothing special. I was cleansing my soul. I think he [Poll] was what he is always. He had a normal performance when he is refereeing a Chelsea match. Do we jump with happiness when Mr Poll comes? No, I don’t. I just say he is a referee Chelsea has no luck with. If we can have another referee we are happy. We do not like to have Mr Poll.’

There we are then. His noxious outburst was nothing special. It was just Mourinho cleansing his soul.

When I read what Mourinho had said, and considered how Clarke, Terry and the Chelsea manager had delivered the same ‘key message’, I did wonder whether it was all premeditated. Of course, Chelsea’s comments to me and about me that night might have all been just hot-headed reactions, but there were three potential benefits from their outbursts.

Firstly, a big row with me would dominate the headlines the next day and distract everyone’s attention from the real story of the night, which was that Chelsea were no longer champions. They had been forced by protocol to form a guard of honour for Manchester United at the start of the match. That hurt the Chelsea players and supporters and signalled José Mourinho’s failure.

Secondly, a confrontation with me, following the storm earlier in the season about John Terry’s sending off, would also ensure that I would not referee Chelsea again for a long time. Unaware that I was retiring, Mourinho did not like the fact that I stood up to Chelsea Football Club and that I refused to be intimidated. It was not difficult to calculate that, if there was another huge row, the Premier League would not give me Chelsea fixtures for a while, or I would impose my own ban on taking charge of Mourinho’s team, because to referee them would be asking for trouble.

Thirdly, Mourinho knew any incident involving me would not be dealt with before the Cup Final and that, when he was eventually ‘punished’, the FA would impose a paltry fine or some puny sanction. So I wonder whether he was trying to send out a message to other referees. Did he want to say, ‘Look, I have seen off Graham Poll, your top official. All of you need to tread carefully with me.’?

Here is another question, this time for the media. Is it right that the totally one-sided reporting of refereeing incidents – based, usually, on the assumption that the referee is wrong and, in my case, based on the view that I loved controversy – makes the situation a thousand times worse? Because it certainly does.

As an example of that, let me tell you about one report of Mourinho’s torrent of outrageous vilification. Rob Beasley, a football reporter with the News of the World, is a Chelsea fan and has good contacts at the club. The rumour that I was about to retire had surfaced and here is what appeared in Rob Beasley’s newspaper under his name on the Sunday after that match at Stamford Bridge:

Chelsea have rubbished retiring referee Graham Poll with a savage send-off.

Poll, 43, is hanging up his whistle this summer and that’s brought nothing but glee at Stamford Bridge.

One top Blues star said: ‘No one here is sad to see the back of him. He always had to be the centre of attention.

‘He was at it again when we played Manchester United. He confronted José Mourinho on the touchline and was obviously playing up to the cameras, it was embarrassing.

‘What’s sad is that he fancied himself as one of the top referees around, but he’ll be remembered as the ref who gave three yellow cards to the same player at the World Cup. What a joke!’

Well, Rob got my age right.

The day after the Stamford Bridge game, the referees gathered at Staverton for one of their fortnightly sessions of analysis and training. I told the others about Senhor Mourinho’s rant. We had a discussion about the behaviour of managers in their technical areas, because Keith Hackett, our manager, wanted a crackdown on all the swearing and abuse for the following season. Several top referees told the meeting that none of them took action against inappropriate comments, language or behaviour in the technical area because the FA would not back them. I agreed completely. That tells you all you need to know about the state of the game and how referees felt abandoned by the Football Association.

As far as I was concerned personally, in the course of six days I had experienced the exhilaration of performing at the peak of my powers in Seville and the degradation of being foully derided at Chelsea. Both matches confirmed my view that it was time for me to finish refereeing.

The rumour that I was retiring had found its way into newspapers. Quite a few people knew my plans by then and I suppose it was inevitable that the news would get out, but it caused a few anxious days. I had been told that I would referee the Football League’s Championship promotion Playoff Final at the rebuilt Wembley. Would the fact that I was retiring make the authorities reconsider?

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League and effectively the man who made the decisions about the professional referees, telephoned. He asked, ‘Is it true?’ I told him it was indeed true that I was retiring. I made it clear that it was not because of Chelsea. It was a decision I had made because I no longer enjoyed refereeing. He said, ‘Well, then it is the right decision. But I am sorry to hear it. The Play-off Final at Wembley is an appropriate end for you and a way for football to thank you for all you have done.’

My final Premiership match was Portsmouth versus Arsenal. There had been heavy rain, but the pitch was playable and I just conducted my normal, routine inspection. However, because of the accurate speculation that it was my last Premiership match, there were fifteen photographers following me as I walked out to look at the pitch and apparently someone commented on radio that, typically, I was milking the moment. Yet one of the reasons I had tried to keep my retirement secret was that I did not want the last games to become a circus.

I disallowed a ‘goal’ for the home team by Niko Kranjcar for offside. Television later proved it was the correct decision and the match finished scoreless. If Portsmouth had won, they would have qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in their history but, because the match was a draw, they finished ninth in the table and Bolton went into Europe instead.

Now, one way of reporting those events would have been to say, ‘Graham Poll made a correct decision which ensured Bolton justly earned a place in the UEFA Cup.’ But, back in the real world again, everyone took the line that I had cost Portsmouth their European adventure. Many reports said I had got the decision wrong and most added the implication that I enjoyed the notoriety the decision had caused in my final Premiership fixture. The Guardian’s headline was, ‘Fingers point at Poll as European dream dies’.

There were other important games on that final day of the Premiership season, especially those at the foot of the table which determined who was relegated. There were other big refereeing decisions that day. Yet the only referee whose name was in the headlines the next day was Graham Poll.

Again, it provided more confirmation that it was time to go. There was no possibility that I would ever again be treated evenhandedly by the media. I was Graham Poll, the man who had blundered at the World Cup and who was ‘always seeking controversy’. The easy, lazy way of reporting my matches was to focus on one of my decisions, say that I had got it wrong and suggest I had done it to get the headlines. I was going to walk away from refereeing earnings of about £90,000 a year but, as I had told Richard Scudamore, I was no longer enjoying it.

Yet my penultimate match was a cracker. The League One play-off semi-final second leg between Nottingham Forest and Yeovil at Forest’s City Ground saw the advantage swing one way and then the other. It went into extra-time and ended with Yeovil winning 5–2 on the night for a 5–4 aggregate victory. Yeovil had been playing in the Conference only four years before yet they had beaten Forest, who had been European champions twice. I had to send off Forest’s David Prutton for two cautions but nobody could quibble with the decision and it was a truly spellbinding match that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Then, as the days ticked away towards my final game, some of the top men in refereeing became nervous. By then, my imminent retirement was an open secret and they thought I might give an explosive interview before the last match, or make some grand gesture during the action (I am not sure what – perhaps they thought I would leap and head in a goal, although they wouldn’t have thought that if they’d ever seen me play). I was upset that they even thought those things. In fact, the precise opposite was true. I fended off all approaches from the media before my final match because I wanted to ensure that the fixture – between West Brom and Derby – was about the clubs and their fans, not about the referee.

Six days before the West Brom–Derby game, I was a guest of Vodafone at the Champions League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan in Athens. My hosts paid me a fee to referee a little match between the media and some of their other guests and to host a pre-match Q & A with Teddy Sheringham. But when they suggested I might take part in a press conference, I had to say ‘No’. All the questions would have been about my retirement and if I had answered honestly, then my last game would have become the circus I was trying to avoid.

And so, after twenty-seven seasons, I reached my final game, match 1554, at Wembley – and I make no apologies at all for being absolutely, utterly, overjoyed to bow out at the national stadium. There were three reasons for that feeling. Firstly, I was still the official the authorities wanted to referee a game worth at least £52 million to the winning club. Richard Scudamore, Keith Hackett and the rest were confident in my ability to take charge of that match and that meant a lot to me. It gave me a sense of pride. I see no reason to apologize for that. Secondly, it was natural for me to want to referee at the ‘new’ Wembley. I had taken charge of the last FA Cup Final in 2000 before they pulled down the old stadium and of course, like every other football fan in the country, I wanted to experience the new place. Thirdly, it provided the perfect way of saying ‘thank you’ to some important people. I scrambled around getting tickets and managed to ensure that, as well as Julia and our children, my mum and dad, two of my sisters and some friends were there to share my last big occasion as a referee. It was profoundly important to me that my mum and dad, who were there when my refereeing career started, were there when it finished.

I am delighted to report that it finished well. The match officials were put up at the Hendon Hall Hotel, which was where I had been before ‘my’ FA Cup Final and which has a unique place in English football history because it was where the England team stayed before the 1966 World Cup Final. Staying there in 2007 gave the occasion a special feel for me, but I can honestly say that I was not at all emotional. The time had come to call time on my career, and it just felt right.

People who were in on the increasingly unsecret secret about my retirement noted that I sung the national anthem lustily that day at Wembley, but those who knew me well realized that I always did. Belting out ‘God Save The Queen’ was my way of forcing out any last-minute nerves. I will admit that I could not look across to where I knew my mum was sitting, however. She had said to me, ‘Think of me when you sing the anthem.’ So I knew she’d be looking and that if we had made eye contact, I would have lost it. I will also concede that when I stood there, on a red carpet at a full house at Wembley, singing the national anthem, I did think back to those games in the parks when I started. The truth is, I always did that during anthems before big games that I was about to referee. For some reason, my mind always went back to games in a particular park in Stevenage – Hampson Park, an exposed, windy plot up on a hilltop near a water tower.

At Wembley, on 28 May 2007, it was a great help to have two really good assistants, Darren Cann and Martin Yerby, plus Mike Dean as fourth official. They all knew it was my last game and I also told Jim Ashworth, the manager of the National Group refs, who was ‘in charge’ of the officials for the Play-off Finals. Jim was also retiring, so the Derby–West Brom match was his last as well, and I told him the truth about my finishing so that we were all relaxed about the situation. I was lifted by the little words and gestures by which Jim and the others let me know they wanted my last game to go well.

Twelve minutes into the match, West Brom’s Jason Koumas danced past a couple of opponents and into the Derby area. Tyrone Mears slid in with a tackle and upended Koumas in the process. I was really close to play and signalled ‘no penalty’ by slicing the air with both hands like a giant pair of scissors. Martin Yerby, the assistant who was on the far side of the pitch but in line with the incident, said, ‘Great decision, Pollie’, but I heard Deano, my mate the fourth official, mutter, ‘Oh no!’ I am told that my mum and sisters, who were also in line with the incident, glanced at each other with a wide-eyed, raised eyebrows look. They didn’t say anything to each other, but they thought it was a penalty. I would suggest that 80 per cent of the paying public inside the stadium probably agreed with them. The West Brom fans certainly did, and started to let me know. But we had a fifth official, Trevor Massey, to cover for injuries. Where he was sitting, he could see a TV monitor and he ran down and said to Deano, ‘He got it right. The defender got the ball. Pollie got it right.’

It was enormously satisfying to get such a big call correct in such a big game. There was another penalty appeal by West Brom in the second half which I turned down – it was a much easier call, but it was right as well. Yet, if I am 100 per cent honest with myself, I know I should have sent off West Brom’s Sam Sodje and Derby’s Tyrone Mears in the second half. Both had already been cautioned and each committed a second cautionable offence, yet I didn’t get the cards out. That was because I knew that the headlines would have been about me sending players off in my last game. People would have said, ‘Typical Graham Poll. It’s his last game and so he has to use his red card.’ So, although much of the media praised me for getting the penalty decisions correct, the honest truth is that my refereeing that day was compromised. I did not feel I could referee as I should have done; I did not feel I could send someone off for two cautions. I’d have red-carded someone for punching an opponent, or for a handball on the line, but not for two cautions. To mangle a well-known saying, I erred on the side of not cautioning.

But I certainly enjoyed the day. On the major occasions of my career – the big, set-piece matches – I always aimed to referee as if it were a normal game of football. Because it always was. Inside the white touchlines, it was just twenty-two blokes and me, as it had been all those years ago in Hampson Park. Yet, if by sixty minutes or so of a big match, things had gone well, I did allow myself a moment to take in the surroundings and the circumstances. A referee knows by sixty minutes whether he has ‘got’ the game – whether his decision-making and management have been good enough. Decisions become more critical in the last thirty minutes, because that is when the results of games are determined. By then, however, if a referee has had a good first hour, the players will accept the decisions made in the last half an hour, more often then not. And so, at Wembley in my last professional appointment, after an hour or so, I did permit myself to have a look around, soak it all in and think where I was and how far I had come. I took in the magnitude of what my job had been – refereeing huge matches like the Play-off Final – and acknowledged that it was ending. I did not experience an iota of sadness; I felt only that the race was run.

Not long after that, Derby’s Stephen Pearson scored the game’s only goal and provoked a really tense finish as West Brom pressed for an equalizer and Derby defended the lead which would carry them into the Premiership. In the dying moments, the tension exploded, and players from both sides squared up in a mêlée, but I was able to defuse the situation by getting in among the players, staying calm, pulling the instigator out and using some of the body language and people-management I had learned over the years.

I had intended to be in the centre-circle when I blew the whistle for full time, and I wanted the ball to be near me, so that I could grab it for a souvenir. I had thought about doing a dramatic, European-style signal as I whistled at the finish – putting both hands into the air, then moving them parallel to the ground and then putting them down by my side. But, when the moment actually came I was too engrossed in the action and too tired to do all that stuff. I was in the Derby area and I just put my two arms in the air and gave a peep on my ‘Tornado’ whistle to end the game and finish my professional career.

I felt drained. I think the mental pressure of the previous few months had taken its toll – the strain of knowing for so long that my career was finishing and the anxiety of hoping it would end well. After all, my life as a professional ref could have concluded very differently and far less satisfyingly. I might not have reached 100 international games. I might not have refereed the Play-off Final. Or I might have had a major controversy at Wembley. But it had all gone as well as I could possibly have hoped – with a terrific European match in Seville, an epic Play-off semi-final at Nottingham Forest and a farewell at Wembley. As I relaxed, I was engulfed by the overwhelming fatigue which comes when stress ends.

In Play-off Finals, wrongly in my view, the losing team does not go up to the Royal Box for any sort of presentation. Neither do the match officials. So we stood about in the middle watching Derby players climb the steps to receive their trophy and medals. I shook hands with the assistants and with Jim Ashworth. Deano and I hugged each other and then, after a very short while, I said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ It was over.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fat King Melon

That is how it ended for ‘Referee G Poll (Herts)’ but there were so many good days and good stories. I want to tell you about the altercation in the tunnel between Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira and some of the tales from fourteen years as a Premiership ref. And I want to take you behind the scenes of my life as a referee and explain how I learned to deal with being ‘The Thing from Tring’, the wanker in the black, that ref everyone thought was arrogant.

So I have to start, briefly, with my parents. I have to start with my dad. He was a ref, so it is him I have to thank (or blame). I also have to start with my mum, who drove me to all my early games and stood, huddled in the cold and rain, watching me referee before taking me home again.

Throughout my career in refereeing, people asked me why I did it. I answered, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I am a football fan and I have been closer to the action in big games than anyone other than the players. I travelled the world to see truly superb players – Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Andriy Shevchenko, Cristiano Ronaldo – in superb stadiums. I rose to the daunting physical and intimidating mental challenges of refereeing. In fact, I relished those challenges.

But it didn’t start like that. It didn’t start like that for my dad, either. For him, like a lot of referees I suspect, it began as a way to earn a few more quid. He needed the money for us, his family, which I was the last to join.

I was born in 1963. It was the year Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech, Bobby Moore became England captain, the Beatles released their first album and London was swinging. But in Hertfordshire, my mum and dad had more mundane concerns when I arrived in the world. I was born in the Hitchin maternity hospital but lived throughout my childhood and adolescence in Stevenage, an old market town which became the first of the ‘new towns’ – developments which were deliberately and dramatically expanded to re-house people after the Second World War.

Mum and Dad did their bit to aid Britain’s recovery from the ravages of war as well – by contributing to the baby boom. They married in 1957, moved to Stevenage that year and started their family fairly quickly. Susan arrived in 1958, Deborah in 1960, Mary in ’61 and me in ’63 – just after Dad had got rid of a train set which is famous in our family.

The story is that he bought a toy train set when Mum was pregnant with Susan, in case the baby was a boy. He kept this train set, unused in its box, for years while Deborah and Mary came along. Then, when Mum was pregnant with me, he assumed the baby would be another daughter, so he got rid of the train set – just before little Graham arrived. If you put that story alongside the fact that Mum and Dad were both football mad, and that I had a career in football which they have enjoyed sharing, you can understand why, sometimes, my sisters felt a little vexed about little Graham – well, not about me as such but about all the time Mum and Dad spent with me at football.

The Poll family moved when I was one year old. We moved a short distance, in the same Stevenage neighbourhood of Shephall, but the new home – a four-bedroomed, terraced house – had more space. There were five houses in the terrace and ours was the second from the right. As I grew older, I made friends with boys in the terrace and across the street, and a crowd of us used to spend all our spare time ‘over Ridlins’ – at Ridlins Wood Athletics Track and Playing Fields, just behind the houses opposite our house. As well as the athletics track, there were swings and slides and five football pitches. We played football there from dawn to dusk.

If that all sounds mundane, I make no apologies. I realize that some autobiographies start with terrible tales of depravation or horrific accounts of childhood abuse. My story began with loving, hard-working parents in a normal home, but I am sure a shrewd sociologist would spot, in the child I was, clues about the man (and referee) I became.

For instance, why was I picked for the leading role of Fat King Melon in my primary school play? No, it was not because I looked like a melon. In those days I was as thin as a stick and my hair was so fair it was white. I was reminded about being Fat King Melon by one of the supportive letters I received when I returned home from the 2006 World Cup. Peter Browning, who taught me at primary school, wrote it and recalled that I had been in that school play.

I loved amateur dramatics. I suppose that sociologist would nod knowingly at that statement. My critics in the media, who have accused me of enjoying the limelight of publicity, would smile at the admission that I enjoyed being in front of the stage lighting. But my own analysis is that I liked acting because it was a way of dealing with an inner insecurity.

If I was told, as a schoolboy, to go to such-and-such a room, I would want to loiter outside, dithering about whether it was the right room and what people would think about me when I went in. So, to deal with that feeling, I would confront it. I would burst into the room and be completely over-the-top. I used to overcompensate.

Decades later, when I first reached the Football League referees’ list and started going for medical checks, my blood pressure was always very high. That was anxiety – not about passing the fitness assessment, but about meeting people and about what those people would think of me.

So, at my schools in Stevenage – Ashtree Infants and Primary and then Thomas Alleynes – I overcompensated. I was the class joker and took to the stage. My first role at senior school was as a little girl in HMS Pinafore. I don’t want the sociologist to even think about that. We also did old-time musicals, which I loved, especially when the local girls’ school joined us for productions when I reached the fourth form (now known as Year Ten). I was one of the chaps who used to enter from one side of the stage to do ‘I say, I say, I say’ jokes.

My good friend in those days was Alan Crompton, who was one of those people who are good at every single sport. He was great at rugby, an outstanding cricketer and a very decent footballer – really annoying. In one old-time musical he and I dressed up as soldiers and sang a duet about being comrades. I am pleased to say, all these years later, that Crompo is still a comrade.

My schooldays were happy days because of those extracurricular activities. But I wasted my academic abilities. Thomas Alleynes, a boys-only school, changed from being a selective grammar to a comprehensive the year I started, yet it maintained grammar school attitudes. There were six academic ‘streams’ in each year. I was near the bottom of the top stream, but the boys I most aspired to befriend and imitate – the Jack the Lads who were quite bright but also liked a laugh – were in the second stream. My desire at school was to make the other kids smile. I used to mimic the teachers and spent more time kicked out of classes than inside. On one occasion, the physics teacher sent me out before I’d gone in, to save time later.

When I decided to leave school just before my sixteenth birthday, my parents were very disappointed, especially my dad. He would have given anything for the opportunity to go into further or higher education, but none of his three daughters chose to do so and now his fourth and last child was spurning that chance as well. He told me I could only leave school if I had a job. So I bought a three-piece, brown, pin-striped suit. Crompo bought a similar outfit in charcoal grey. The comrades were suited. He had an interview with Pearl Assurance; I had one at Prudential Insurance. We both got the jobs. The comrades were sorted.

Just over a year later, I began refereeing and so my two careers, in commerce and in football, had begun. Mum and Dad, I know, became proud of my achievements in both. You only begin to understand your own parents fully – their hopes and fears, their love and their pride – when you have children of your own, and so it was when I had a heart-filling moment involving my daughter Gemma that I appreciated how my mum and dad felt about me.

At the first parent-teacher meeting at Gemma’s school, the teacher said, ‘This is the most difficult meeting of this type I have ever had.’ I glanced at my wife, Julia, wondering what was to follow. The teacher continued, ‘Gemma is wonderful; a lovely, lovely child who is a pleasure to have in the classroom.’

Nobody has ever called me a lovely, lovely referee but, as I walked home from Gemma’s school, I had a warm feeling of satisfaction knowing that my career in football must have meant a lot to those close to me. My mum, bless her, says there have been so many proud moments that she cannot pick just one, but when pressed, she admits it was the FA Cup Final – the last one at the old Wembley before the bulldozers moved in, and the one where I had to sneak out of the back door of my house to avoid a photographer hiding in the bushes.

CHAPTER NINE

Cup Final Blues

Studying the TV listings for Cup Final day in the year 2000, I remarked to Julia that television coverage was starting at 1 pm. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said.

She replied, ‘Yeah, two whole hours before kick-off.’

I meant, of course, it was ridiculous that the build-up was so brief.

As a boy, FA Cup Final day was spent camped in front of the television – for the entire day. Mum prepared the bread rolls the night before so that, once the TV build-up began at about 9 am, we could settle down and not be disturbed. We scoffed the rolls as we devoured the unbroken hours of football programmes. In those days – I sound like an old fart, I know – the FA Cup Final was the only live football coverage and the television companies made the most of it. So did we. We sat there all day, transfixed by Cup Final It’s a Knockout, then The Road to Wembley, then Meet the Players’ Families and so on. Then came the match. And that evening we’d watch the highlights again on Match of the Day.

By the year 2000, there was live football on television almost every day and so a lot less fuss was made about the FA Cup Final. My many critics will probably construe my disappointment about that as a desire to be in the limelight longer, because 2000 was the year I refereed the FA Cup Final, between Chelsea and Aston Villa.

I have to admit that I played my part, not at all begrudgingly, in the pre-match publicity. I let Sky TV film me having my hair cut in Berkhamsted. The BBC filmed me playing Mousetrap with my daughters. The Bucks Herald came and took a picture of me standing in my back garden, brandishing a red card. It seemed a bit corny, but I can’t pretend I minded too much. I had a different response for a reporter and photographer from the News of the World, however.

On the Saturday before the Final, I was watching a video with the kids. Harry, my son, was not quite three months old. My daughters, Gemma and Josie, were six and four. At 9 am precisely, the reporter rang the front door bell. Turning up unannounced like that is called ‘doorstepping’, apparently. But the photographer wasn’t on my doorstep. He was hiding just a little way up the road in some bushes with a long lens trained on my front door.

The reporter said, ‘We are publishing a story tomorrow regarding a former allegiance of yours.’ I had no idea what he meant. I wondered if it was about a former relationship with someone, but I could not think of anything that would be a story. Then he said, ‘We have it on good authority that you used to be a Chelsea supporter.’

Their intention was to print a story saying, ‘Cup Final ref is Chelsea fan’. It would create such a furore that I would be taken off the game. I replied, ‘You are trespassing on my land. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.’

As I closed the door, he shouted, ‘I’ll wait. It would pay you to speak to us.’ Clive, our postman, did call the police. He spotted these two characters sitting in our street, knew they were not locals, and telephoned the police, who said they could not do anything.

Meanwhile, indoors, I was piecing events together in my mind. The first clue was that, Nick Whitehead, who had been a friend of Mum and Dad when we all worked at Kodak, had called me three times during the week, out of the blue. He left two messages for me and then, when he managed to talk to me, wished me luck and made a couple of references to my having been a Chelsea fan. I thought he was trying to make a joke. I certainly did not think he could be serious, because it did not have a grain of truth and I assumed that he knew it was not true.

The truth, incidentally, is that when I was young I used to support a local boys’ team in Stevenage called Gonville Rovers, and I have always supported England. As far as professional clubs are concerned, I am an ex-Leeds fan and a lapsed Queens Park Rangers supporter.

The first match that captured my imagination as a boy was on one of those lovely days watching the Cup Final. It was in 1970, when Leeds played Chelsea at Wembley. And, as young boys do, I decided that day that I was a Leeds supporter. I held on to that idea for about three years, and even had a pair of Leeds United sock garters. They had special, numbered tags. Mine had the number seven on the tags, which I thought might help me whack the ball at 70 mph, like Leeds number 7 Peter Lorimer.

But when Leeds stopped winning, I stopped supporting them, as young boys do. My dad was a QPR fan, so I declared myself a QPR supporter as well, although I seldom went to games. I was too busy watching my dad referee or cheering on Gonville Rovers. The professional team I saw the most was Arsenal, because I had a friend who was a Gunners’ fan and we could get to Highbury quite easily by public transport from Stevenage. I went there quite regularly for about three seasons. But I was never an Arsenal supporter, because they were shockingly bad in those days.

All referees have to fill in a form at the start of each season with details of where they live (to calculate distances for expenses) and any potential conflicts of interest. They are asked about any club allegiances. I always left that section blank. I am prepared to own up now that I never declared my affection for Gonville Rovers.

Anyway, I was told that Nick Whitehead and another acquaintance from Kodak, John Elliott, attended a sporting dinner, at which England’s finest former referee, Jack Taylor, was the speaker and answered questions. Nick asked the great man whether a referee could take charge of an FA Cup Final if he supported one of the teams. He was told, ‘Of course not.’

Whether Nick honestly but mistakenly thought I supported Chelsea, and whether that answer set the cash register bell ringing in his mind, I don’t know. Perhaps an alarm bell should have rung in my mind when Nick telephoned me out of the blue to talk about the Blues. Anyway, I was told that Nick had given the ‘story’ to the News of the World.

I made a telephone call to Adrian Bevington, of the Football Association’s press office. He rang the News of the World and stressed that the FA knew that I was a lapsed QPR follower, not a Chelsea supporter. He said that if the newspaper alleged I would not be impartial at the Cup Final, the FA would sue.

The bloke in the bushes had not managed to snatch a picture of me when I had answered the front door. And I had some more disappointment for him. I smuggled myself and my family out of the back of the house and into the garage. We drove away without the News of the World realizing.

I’ve had ‘gentlemen of the press’ camped outside more than once in my career. I hope they all filled up with petrol locally on their way back to their offices, and bought ciggies and sarnies locally as well. I’d like to think that, whatever else they did, they helped the local Tring economy.

Numbers of potential customers for local shopkeepers have varied. An entire media circus made their way to the Tring exit of the A41 bypass immediately after my mistake in the 2006 World Cup. But there was just a meagre pair – a reporter and a photographer – after the match at The Valley the following season, when the myth was created that I had done a special favour for Charlton manager Alan Pardew.

I have never really worked out what picture the photographer in the bushes before the 2000 FA Cup Final thought he might get. Did he expect me to come to the door in a full Chelsea kit, with rosettes, a scarf and a rattle?

The News of the World still believed they had a story, but they relegated it to page nine. They published the results of the QPR games I had reffed. I think Rangers had lost five out of six, so any perceived bias by me had not done them much good.

I made another telephone call a couple of days before the Final. This one was to Aston Villa manager John Gregory to explain what had happened. He said, ‘If I could have chosen a referee for the Final, it would be you.’ I like to think, knowing what I do now about him, that he meant it, but it did not stop Villa using psychology to try to undermine me at Wembley.

I was thirty-six, and nowhere near the end of my career, I hoped. Yet I knew that this would be my only FA Cup Final. Nobody gets the top domestic honour more than once. It was an appointment I treasured and cherished. It is every referee’s ambition to take charge of the Final and yet some very good referees never get the opportunity. Every year, the guessing game about who will earn the appointment dominates referees’ conversations. We work out who has a chance, calculate who might be unlucky, and wait for the big announcement.

Ever since I had started refereeing – or at least from the days when I started to do well and begin to think I could scale the refereeing ladder – I had aimed to reach the Final. In fact, in about 1985 I told my mum, ‘I will referee the FA Cup Final in the year 2000.’ I meant that I was striving for it. It was my career target. In the succeeding years, I kept that target in my sights as I worked my way up that ladder.

So when the daft prediction that I had made as a young man actually came true, I was as proud as could be. Joe Guest, the FA’s head of refereeing, telephoned and said, ‘I’m calling to see if you are available on May 22nd.’ For once, I didn’t make a wisecrack. I resisted the temptation to say, ‘I’ll have to check.’ I understood the importance of the FA Cup, the significance of the Final and the place the day had in the heart of real football fans. Plus, the 2000 Final was the first of the new millennium and the last at Wembley before the old ground, with its traditions and memories, was demolished to be replaced (eventually!) by a new stadium.

So, despite the best efforts of Nick Whitehead and the News of the World, I enjoyed the build-up to the big day. I wallowed in it. Neither am I ashamed to say that I enjoyed all the media attention involved. It made me feel special, but then, to my mind, the FA Cup Final was special and I was going to have a role in it.

Tradition dictates that the Wembley match officials and their wives are honoured by the London Society of Referees at an ‘Eve of the Final Rally’ – a social gathering which referees of all levels attend. As a young referee, I had gone to the Rally to gawp at icons like Neil Midgley and George Courtney. I was far too much in awe of them to actually approach them, but lots of the other refs wanted their moment with the Wembley officials, and so the Rally always went into extra-time.

The fact that I had been so many times to the Rally as a callow kid was another reason for me to savour the fact that I was going to referee the 2000 Final. Now it was my turn to be the principal guest at the Rally, but I was concerned it would end too late.

Peter Jones – we shall meet him again during my story – had been the Cup Final ref in 1999 and told me that he did not get back to his hotel from the Rally until just before midnight. He had to deal with a queue of people wanting autographs. He admitted that it was not ideal preparation for his big day.

So I asked to change a couple of things. I said that I’d arrange for the four match officials to autograph all the 200 or so programmes for the event in advance. Nobody would have to queue up at the end for signatures. And I said that I wanted to speak at the beginning of the function, rather than at the conclusion, so that I could leave in time for a proper night’s rest.

Some of the blazer brigade thought it was sacrilege to alter the schedule. They concluded – like many before and since – that Graham Poll was arrogant. I could argue that my need to prepare properly was the opposite of arrogance. But most people have already made up their mind about me.

Something else made the chaps in blazers splutter with indignation. Darren Drysdale, one of the assistant referees, had recently become engaged. He and his fiancée, Wendy, couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Eventually I had to say, ‘Can you give it a rest please? Or get a room.’

He replied, ‘We can’t help it. We’re in love.’ Obviously, I did not tell the other match officials about that at the first opportunity or take the mickey out of him in any way at all. I returned to the Hendon Hall Hotel at a respectable hour and had a good sleep. I can’t tell you whether I dreamed or not – but then I had been dreaming of refereeing the FA Cup Final for nearly twenty years.

On the big day, I was determined to follow the advice of previous Final refs and seep myself in the atmosphere. They said they had enjoyed standing on the balcony, between Wembley’s old twin towers, watching both sets of supporters walking towards the stadium along Empire Way. But when I stood there in 2000, Villa supporters who spotted me started to sing vile songs about my alleged allegiance to Chelsea. Joe Guest advised us to leave the balcony. I was grievously disappointed. Thanks, News of the World.

Then, in the dressing rooms, I did something else to outrage the blazer blokes – another break with tradition. FA official Adrian Titcombe always led the two teams out. The referee, assistants and fourth official brought up the rear. Over the years, when I had watched this, I felt it was wrong. I thought that it undervalued the referee and his team. So I asked that the FA follow their own regulation, which stipulated that the referee should lead out the teams. For the sake of every ref who has taken charge of Finals since, I am glad that I won that little amendment to the protocol.

The last FA Cup Final at the old Wembley was the seventy-second, and was decided by a goal in the seventy-second minute. Neither the game nor the goal was memorable. Gianfranco Zola took a free-kick for Chelsea, Villa goalkeeper David James fumbled the ball, knocking it against the chest of defender Gareth Southgate, and Roberto Di Matteo thumped the lose ball into the roof of the net. Di Matteo had scored the quickest goal in an FA Cup Final (forty-two seconds) three years earlier when Chelsea beat Middlesbrough 2–0. This time, in 2000, his goal was suitably scrappy for a poor game, and the most prestigious appointment of my domestic career was not a great occasion for me either.

In fact, it was a horrid, bitter experience. It was soured utterly by that News of the World article and the way some Villa players used the story to try to put me under pressure. During the game, Villa players repeatedly made snide remarks inferring that I was biased. They said things like, ‘There’s two teams playing, Pollie. Not one.’ They said, ‘Come on, be fair.’ They hoped that, subconsciously, I would want to prove that I was not favouring Chelsea. They were hoping that I would react by giving the next marginal decision to Villa. And I am pretty sure that they had been told to use that tactic, because the players who did it the most were the right-back, the central midfielder and the left-forward. Because referees run a diagonal path throughout a match, those were the players I most often found myself near. I believed they had been instructed to target me.

The indignation I felt – the outrage – was because the allegation behind their remarks attacked my basic integrity. I had worked for twenty years to referee the Cup Final. It was my big occasion. Yet they were saying I was dishonest. Every little comment they made was like a slap in the face.

Then, right at the finish, when the teams were waiting to go up to collect their medals, a member of the Villa backroom staff said to me, ‘You f***ing Chelsea fan. You c***.’ That was the last straw. The comment touched a raw nerve. I confronted him and although I have never been someone who hits people, I honestly think I might at least have grabbed him if Joe Guest had not intervened. That would have given the News of the World a real story.

Then, as I climbed the famous thirty-nine steps to collect my own medal, the Villa fans booed and repeated the News of the World’s false allegation. Peter Jones said the finest moment of his life – of his life! – was at the end of the 1999 Cup Final. In the moment before he left the pitch, he looked back at the scene, with the winning team doing their lap of honour and the fans cheering. He opened the presentation box in his hand, looked down at his medal, and thought, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ On my big day, the Villa fans were at the tunnel end and so I left the arena to catcalls from people suggesting that I was biased.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.