RateTheRef

In the Times today, Martin Samuel, whom I have long believed to be a pontificating journalist whose opinion of himself appears to far outstrip his literary talents and insights, makes an ad hominem attack on Matt Donohue. There is a breed of journalist who take delight in kicking a man when he is down as Samuel has done here in citing other perceived mistakes made by Donohue. It may be that Donohue isn't yet ready to be a VAR at high profile EPL matches and perhaps may never be but there is a fine line between objective truth telling and subjective belittling. I believe Samuel has shown the latter.

Just a further point to add to this theme. Experience is one thing you cannot buy and cannot manufacture. It has to be acquired by putting in the necessary time and learning from one's successes and failures. I do think experience is generally rather undervalued these days.

As I have said earlier in the thread, I do think it was a mistake to appoint a relatively inexperienced VAR to this very high profile match. I presume that Mr Donohue had put in some VAR performances in less high profile matches which were deemed good and so he was put onto this match. Sooner or later , when you are climbing the ladder of your profession, you have to be entrusted with something far bigger than you have hitherto been accustomed to.  I remember such an occasion very well. A really good leader/manager will know when that time is right, they seem to have got it wrong on this occasion.

Quote from: TheThingFromLewes on Mon 07 Sep 2026 16:42

Alan Young for our well respected Tranmere correspondents to report back on…

I'm hopefully going to be at Montrose v Cove Rangers and nowhere this one.

My experience of Mr Young has been fairly mixed, but he's never been bad enough(yet) to make my top five referees I never want to see in the middle for a Tranmere game again

He's actually in my top one but to be fair that is based on just a single match of staggering ineptitude and incompetence.

If I had the time and patience then I might construct a table of reviews of refereeing performances by contributors to this site under the headings Positive, Neutral and Negative. The comments about a referee's performance to which I would give most credence are from those posters whose contributions would fall fairly evenly into the three categories.

I think my own comments would find themselves more often in the first two categories but there have been a few in the third. There may be unconscious bias here but genuinely I write as I find.

Quote from: referee12 on Tue 08 Sep 2026 12:35

Hopefully Robinson will be back in the middle for a prem game as soon as possible!!!

I doubt it personally.  The cynical part of me thinks that the merger of SG1 and SG2 lets them downgrade referees without actually downgrading them, thereby avoiding the employment contract pitfall.  Tim Robinson is 42 now, hasn't really progressed since he joined SG1, and I suspect he will be mainly Championship this season to make way for the younger development group referees.  And I doubt he will be the last of the former SG1 group to suffer that fate over the next few seasons.

I believe ( though am not certain ) that both Tim Robinson and Carl Brook come from the County of Sussex. I have seen each of them referee about three times and on that admittedly not huge sample would rank Brook higher than Robinson. This probably is clear evidence that I am not looking for the same officiating virtues and competencies as those who make the decisions about promotion. I thought Robinson was fortunate to get promotion to the old SG1 and his appointments this season appear to be bearing that opinion out. I should perhaps add the caveat that all the matches I have seen both referees officiate were in Leagues 1 and 2 and it may be that a different skill set is required for that level rather than Championship and Premiership. I would have placed both men as quite decent Championship referees.

It’s clear TVOS, that you didn’t think much of Kevin Lynch when he was an active referee.  I did - for the simple reason that he was one of the few who showed a bit of personality, character and (perish the thought) a sense of humour.

He almost paid for it when, at a Leyton Orient v Brentford game, in his penultimate season, he spontaneously decided to ‘conduct’ the Brentford supporters when they were chanting stuff about his officiating.

Unfortunately football had already started to park it’s own sense of humour where the sun don’t shine.  Brentford complained to the Football League, whose boss tried (and failed) to get Mr.Lynch suspended. I thought then, and still do, that the only ones who brought the game into disrepute over that incident were those who failed to see the funny side of it.

I’ve often wondered whether, had he been suspended over it, Mr.Lynch would have told the authorities to stuff it in the same dark crevice.  Fortunately it didn’t come to that, so we had one more season of things to be richly embellished later for our entertainment today!

Another referee who wasn't afraid of showing his enjoyment and sense of humour was John Kirkby ( Sheffield ). In the days when matchday programmes contained a little pen portrait of the referee, part of his entry read " John considers his greatest achievement in football was finding a fiver on the terraces at the Baseball Ground "  The humourless apparatchiks who run senior football now wouldn't permit that sort of tongue in cheek comment, in the name of spurious professionalism.

It's really rather sad and pathetic when those who have left the spotlight still crave it and start saying daft and very unprofessional things to gain attention. In trying to fit in with laddish culture I'm afraid Mike Dean just erodes the respect in which he was held for being a very good, though not superlative, referee.