RateTheRef

I believe that Breakspear has been knocking on the SG2 door for a little while now. Quite why he never seems to make it when they take people who have done barely a year in Divs 1 and 2 is hard to fathom and leads me to suspect that there is more to it that just refereeing ability. On his day Breakspear is a very decent referee and deserves his chance at a higher level.

A suggestion that progression and promotion in refereeing circles could be based on something other than sheer ability?  Surely not!

Card-free games like that are quite interesting.  There seems to be an assumption they're rare, but looking at the stats they happen every week (although CB would not be high up the list of likely candidates), and they seem to involve certain refs rather more often than the law of averages would suggest.

This is an interesting phenomenon.  I can recall watching some referees when the TV cameras were around that would be waving cards at every opportunity.  Yet in the absence of live coverage the cards stayed in their pockets.  One notable example was Uriah Rennie who was actually quite good when he refereed properly as opposed to the TV way.  Now that every game is under so much scrutiny, there is little opportunity to referee with any common sense.