After another bad refereeing performance in the A-League Grand Final, it’s becoming an alarming concern that refereeing standards in Australian football is poor, probably equal to the current “coaching quality crisis”.
It’s becoming an alarming fact that of the last four Grand Finals, three of them have had some major drama involving a referee.
The referees, it seems, are becoming influenced by the players on the pitch, and not the other way around.
It is not only the Grand Finals that are subject to this poor performance.
How Kevin Muscat even played after his stomping incident is confusing to everyone. Like Muscat, Danny Tiatto gets away with a lot more then he should.
Even the great Juninho struggled when he was here because he was not protected by the referees and was constantly taken to ground through over physical play.
My brother in-law taught John Aloisi’s daughter when he was playing at the Mariners. When asked what the major difference between here and Europe was, he said the refereeing here is quite poor. He said that players – particularly skillful ones – were not protected in the same way that they are in Europe.
I think this poses a problem on two fronts: first, in order to encourage our players to improve technically they need to be protected and not spend a lot of the game on their arse, which is why we are poor technically as a nation.
Second, highly technically gifted players may be apprehensive about coming to the league because their skills will either be under-used or they will end up like Juninho and spend alot of the time on the grass.
I would love to see someone in the mould of a Kaka, Nakamura, or Ronaldinho set our League on fire, with protection from the referees.
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