Nick Townsend: Why common sense on the field must come second to rule of the law book

Philip Don can be the referees' biggest critic but their greatest supporter. Nick Townsend meets the big man in the middle

In a darkened room near London's Marble Arch, two men pore over videos, some of them containing explicit hardcore material, the vast majority of it acceptable family viewing. In a procedure somewhat similar to the censors who comprise the British Board of Film Classification, Philip Don and Keith Hackett remove clips of what might be deemed offensive material: violence and aggression, some of it premeditated, most heat of the moment, but all considered by the pair worthy of further review.

Don is Select Group Manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, or to put it more simply, the man who decrees which of his 24-strong group of professional referees will be in charge of all 10 Premiership matches and six Football League games each weekend. More pertinently, he, together with other officials, such as the former referee Hackett, studies all top matches every week and prepares a compilation of positive refereeing and examples open to debate. A small proportion will be just plain bad decisions. But all will be discussed at the professional referees' fortnightly meetings.

Their last get-together was last Friday, when Dermot Gallagher was among those who, when shown the video footage of Paul Ince's altercation with Niall Quinn in the Middlesbrough-Sunderland game and asked what action he would have taken, concurred with the match official Mark Halsey's decision to issue a red card to the former England man. Few among those present could have imagined the furore that would ensue in the aftermath of the following day's match at Old Trafford when Robbie Keane committed an even worse assault on David Beckham, having been challenged crudely by the England captain.

Gallagher responded with a caution for each, when the majority of us would have issued a red to Keane, and possibly one to Beckham, too. However, a significant number of managers, players and spectators applauded him for displaying "common sense", with the now familiar addendum: "It was just handbags."

The outcome, though, was that Gallagher has been removed from "high-profile" games for an unspecified period, a story which appeared under such newspaper headlines as Ref relegated and Blunder costs ref a grand.

Many within professional refereeing circles are furious, not so much with Gallagher's "punishment" – this is not the first occasion since the inception of professional referees this season that such action has been taken – but with the manner in which it was portrayed in the tabloid media, following comments made anonymously by a senior figure at the FA. One refereeing source was particularly damning when he said: "Dermot has been hung out to dry." The Football League are also far from content with the implication that by Gallagher's so-called relegation their competition is perceived to be second rate.

Don prefers not to speak publicly on the politics of the particular issue, although he is at pains to stress that not all top referees will necessarily be in charge of a major game every week following suggestions that other officials had been "dropped".

"People were saying that, last Saturday, Neale Barry was at Stockport because of poor performances. Well, that's absolute nonsense. He just happened to be doing a First Division game last week, just as Graham Poll was at Crystal Palace on Sunday, Graham Barber at Portsmouth and Mark Halsey at Bristol Rovers. All those guys will be out in the Premier League this weekend. I just ring the changes."

However, Don has much to say on the complex dilemma of determining which actions should be adjudged by using "common sense" and which require mandatory application of the laws. In particular, the bluff Yorkshireman has a straightforward answer to anyone who suggests that Gallagher reacted judiciously, if not strictly to the letter, at Old Trafford.

"That [the Keane incident] was contrary to law," insists the former head teacher. "The player struck somebody in the face. We spent time last week looking at the Middlesbrough-Sunderland game and, to a man, everybody supported Mark Halsey for sending off Paul Ince for striking Quinn. Striking or attempting to strike an opponent is violent conduct. To get consistency I would have expected Dermot to do exactly the same on the Saturday. He interpreted the incident incorrectly, in my opinion."

And what, you ask, of Beckham? Was he not also guilty of a send-off offence? "Precisely," Don agrees. "We wouldn't have had any problem accepting two dismissals there." Yet, you remind Don, he had himself just used the expression "in my opinion". Aren't such contretemps perhaps best left to the official's discretion, in which he can take into account the prevailing spirit and feeling in the game? Shouldn't there be more tolerance of physical excess, say, when the blood is up in a Manchester United-Leeds match?

"You accept that with the minor offences, the push, the shove, the obstruction," he says. "But when you've got a major decision which should result in a dismissal then I don't think you've got any alternative. Common sense can't come into it. You may as well throw the law book out of the window if you're going to say, 'Well, let's apply common sense' in that situation."

He adds: "When referees take decisions that are incorrect in law, they've got to accept the consequences of their actions. That's what they all signed up to at the beginning of the season. Over the season we're looking for greater levels of consistency and a more common interpretation of the major decisions. That is why I was disappointed that Dermot didn't interpret Saturday's incident as Mark interpreted his the Monday before."

As one newspaper headline suggested, Gallagher, who travelled to Sofia last week to officiate in the Uefa Cup tie between CSKA and Milan, will be deprived financially by being relieved temporarily of Premiership matches. The fee for a Football League game is only £210, compared with £500 for a Premier League match (on top of the annual retainer of £33,000). But rather more important is how much his morale will suffer. "Dermot's bounced back in the past," Don says. "I'm sure he will again."

The refereeing supremo adds: "They [the referees] understand now that they're under far more scrutiny than ever before. As Graham Poll said this week, a referee has to be accountable. It's what happens in the world today. Referees are no different from people in every other walk of life. Look at teaching, police, the National Health Service – everybody's accountable for their actions."

Don, 49, who is married with two children, is a former top referee, who officiated at the 1994 World Cup, the European Cup final the same year, and took charge of the 1992 FA Cup final. He retired from refereeing in 1995 and three years later became the Premier League's Referees Officer.

Having spent a quarter century in teaching, including the last six years as head teacher of Northbrook Comprehensive in Lewisham, south London, it would perhaps be invidious to ask him to compare the pupils from his teaching days with the managers and players of today. But one suspects that, on occasions, he would rather be back in the school room.

Certainly, he is "disappointed" by some of Steve McClaren's recent comments in an article under a headline "What do our pro refs do?". Acknowledged as one of the more intelligent and progressive thinkers on the game, the Middlesbrough manager concludes that "the quality of officiating in internationals and Champions' League games is way, way better than we are used to in the Premiership", adding that the Italian Pierluigi Collina "is the best referee in the business".

Don is not impressed. "I find it interesting that he says that Collina is the best thing since sliced bread," he says. "Well, I have to tell you that he was suspended twice last year by the Italian federation. The issue here is that you only see the top European referees once, maybe twice a season, in a European game. The players are on their best behaviour because they know if they pick up two or three cautions they're going to miss future European games. You're not seeing the referees week in, week out. You go to Italy and monitor Collina over a three-month period and he quite often gets himself into hot water."

It annoys Don greatly that such critics regard foreign officials superior to our own. "Did you know that Italian referees have all been summoned this week to a meeting in Rome for words because of concerns about what is going on in Serie A at the moment, in the way that they're not clamping down enough?" he asks. "I'm afraid some of the people in this country are very blinkered. I would say that our referees compare very favourably with their European counterparts. We've got the maximum of 10 on the international panel and our referees, like Poll, Barber and others, are very well respected abroad."

Nevertheless, Don is determined that standards will improve further. Hence the study of those videotapes. "We analyse every game, and compile a tape of six or seven clips from each, which we will show to our referees at our fortnightly meetings. There is a hell of a lot of good, positive practice in those clips. I must say that the majority of things highlighted are examples of good refereeing. Where we look at errors, it's the major decisions, the ones that can swing a match. Having said that, no two situations are alike. There can be a fine line between what's aggression, which is unsporting behaviour and warrants a yellow card, and what is violent conduct. That's up to the referee to judge. We don't want robots out there."

Don attempts to review all contentious incidents from the referee's line of sight. In view of that, perhaps Paul Durkin hadn't seen Graeme le Saux's two-footed tackle on Danny Mills in the Leeds-Chelsea encounter as TV had caught it? "To suggest that would be a cop-out," he declares. "They are paid to see those incidents. The camera looks through Paul to the challenge. I think, for Paul, it has all gone so well, he's coming up to half-time and he's just switched off. He's missed a major decision. In a sense that was far more serious than Keane's spat on Saturday, wasn't it? That could have put somebody out of the game for good." And the outcome? "That's been dealt with by me in private."

As if Don and his colleagues didn't have sufficient problems to deal with involving foul play, of increasing concern are the incorrect verdicts involving offside. In last Sunday's Derby-Chelsea match, Fabrizio Ravanelli's opening goal should clearly have been cancelled out. There were other occasions when the referee's assistants were at fault. "That was worrying," agrees Don, who stresses that officials' peripheral and binocular vision, reflex and reaction time are all tested. "I can show you 20 clips where referees' assistants got it spot on at the weekend. I can show you three or four where they didn't. But that's disappointing, and it's what I've got to work on with the assistants."

In truth, it's an utterly thankless task, because whatever improvements are made, there will always be the refophobes among players, managers and spectators who will use officials' errors to explain their own side's failings, though even Steve McClaren concedes: "Referees have the toughest job in football." "Who'd be a ref", we say, shaking our heads. After last weekend, Philip Don might well be thinking, "Who'd be the refs' ref"?