Players given benefit of doubt

Ian Ridley examines attempts by referees to reduce tension on the field

Here we go again. Ever since the clampdown on the professional foul a decade ago, any attempt to clean up - and thus improve - the game, seems to travel a predictable path; rigorous enforcement of the rules, followed by recrimination and finally regression.

The last week has seen incident upon incidence of bad tackling and indiscipline either leniently dealt with or unpunished. The danger has become that referees nervous of confrontation with whinging managers are backtracking, while gleeful defenders with bad tackling technique take advantage.

Worst of all was Chris Morris's scandalous studs-bared lunge at Keith Gillespie's right knee in the Middlesbrough v Newcastle match last Wednesday. Previously we had had Chris Armstrong's scaled-down version on Patrick Vieira in the north London derby and Stuart Pearce's tackle from behind on Kevin Gallagher during Nottingham Forest v Blackburn, provoking Tim Sherwood's retaliatory manhandling of Pearce. All received yellow cards that might have been red, a fate that could also have befallen Vieira last Sunday for a second bad tackle during Arsenal v Spurs.

David Elleray, the Premiership referees' spokesman and in charge of that latter match, denies that he and his colleagues have gone soft, and thankfully Alan Wilkie's dismissal of Steve Bould for two tackles from behind during Arsenal's match at Liverpool last Sunday lends him support. Elleray does concede, however, that there has been a shift in policy.

"Perhaps there is more benefit of the doubt at the moment but there is no intention to ease off on physical offences," he says. "We had got into the habit of giving a free-kick followed by a yellow card or nothing. Now we have adopted the halfway stage of a more public word to players. I think we are managing situations better and reducing tension."

It follows a meeting last month when it was agreed that referees had been "over-harsh" on the question of deliberate handball, though Elleray insists that there was no question of relaxing unilaterally the approach to the Fifa guidelines on violent play and the tackle from behind.

Elleray took soundings about the midweek round of matches at another meeting of referees on Thursday. At Middlesbrough, he said, the referee Stephen Lodge had not had a clear view of the Morris tackle, while at Forest Paul Alcock had deemed Sherwood's offence a yellow-card push rather than a red-card punch.

Having seen a TV replay of the Armstrong foul, Elleray agreed that "the decision may well have been different but you have to have a very clear view for a sending-off". Armstrong having received the benefit of the doubt, he felt Vieira deserved it too.

Such explanations help and mitigate but one can only hope that, however laudable their new attitude to defusing situations, referees do not neglect their duty in any misguided attempt to court popularity and avoid the pin-pricks of David Mellor's barbs. And sparing the metaphorical rod early in a game can be to spoil it later.

If there is not to be a return to some excesses of early season and the subsequent self- interested, suspension-fearing whining in the game (although the more complaints about "assistant referees" who do not give the benefit to strikers in offside decisions the better), then players and managers must assume more responsibility.

The aim, surely, is to improve defensive techniques and allow attacking skills to flourish. Then again, as successful as it has been in Europe these last few years, perhaps the English game does not need it.