RateTheRef

I saw most of the match and I have to say I concur - simply outstanding! Even the commentators made specialty mention of how well he performed during a very tricky match. I’ve seen a couple of posts on here recently mentioned how well he had performed - on what I witnessed tonight, he could easily fit in SG2!

Calm and in control throughout the evening, not only during the 90 minutes but also in testing circumstances pre-match when inspecting.

I'll start this with a couple of disclaimers.  I know Sam having worked with him on games between 2010 and 2012 when he was starting out, and I'm a Sheffield Wednesday fan.

But he was outstanding tonight in a really tricky game.  A couple of penalty appeals correctly turned down where the commentators thought real time they should have been given, and an absolutely correct decision to send off Wednesday's Luongo for a terrible tackle.  Managed a couple of handbags situations really well as well.

A really good advert for League 1 football that he contributed to.

Yes those early days were his Isthmian League (and other similar level Leagues) matches, I guess. Saw a few of them but not the one when he abandoned a match at Wingate having sent off 5 home players. Don't think any blame whatsoever was attributed to him even by the offending team.

Anyway, he'd always seemed to me to be a very decent official controlling matches in a calm, confident manner.

That's why I was so disappointed in some aspects of his performance in the drawn Ipswich Barrow Cup-tie last Saturday. His decision making was sound as expected but not only did he show a benign indifference to Barrow's blatant time-wasting which started well before the interval but he himself seemed to slow the game down at every opportunity. The restarting after free-kicks took an age and he frequently prevented the taking of quick free kicks preferring slow and deliberate ceremonial kicks. He twice stopped defensive free-kicks on the edge of a penalty area to have the ball moved no more than two yards. Unnecessarily long chats with players didn't help and play was frequently stopped for minor non-head injuries sometimes when the team with a man down had eschewed the chance to put the ball out.

Despite that, better than most at Portman Road this season with Bobby Madley still top performer.

He's now had five 0-0s in a row. Shades of Howard Webb ?

Does anyone know approximately how old he is?

'He's now had five 0-0s in a row. Shades of Howard Webb ?'

I think that Howard had six PL games in a row, his first six as a PL ref.

I thought 5 but you might be right. At least those 5 (or 6) Premier games were interspersed with other matches with plenty of goals.

Quote from: Readingfan on Thu 09 Dec 2021 07:54

Does anyone know approximately how old he is?

I've not been able to find out his age but I did find this interesting professional summary from which I would estimate he's in his early 30s?

https://www.harbottle.com/our-people/sam-purkiss/

Indeed, very early. Around 31-ish.