James Lawton: Red tape turns referees into robots

Today, according to the latest diktat from the Football Association, the diver is the game's public enemy No 1. He has to be red-carded into oblivion. Leniency by an official will bring the cold hand of authority. It is the kind of message that used to be sent out by the Politbureau.

But no real problem here, you might think. Who would not rally to a banner marked "War on Cheats?" What is more despicable than a deception which seeks to warp the course of fair play? Graham Poll, a Premiership referee already in such good odour with authority that he is on the Fifa list and a potential arbiter of Tokyo's World Cup final next summer, is one crusader who exhibits not a tremor of doubt about the virtues of the official campaign.

He booked Benito Carbone during the West Ham-Derby Boxing Day game – the player was later shown a red card for a second bookable offence – and declared: "Players are going down as if they have been hit by a 10-ton truck. A few years ago they would have ridden tackles. I accept that the game is quicker now and, as a result, a slight contact can put you off balance and take you to the ground. But there is no doubt some players are going down too easily."

No doubt this is a proper concern for any experienced referee, and it just happens that Poll displayed superb judgement in the infancy of this season when he booked Robbie Fowler when he was playing for his old club, Liverpool, against Bolton. Fowler definitely had contact with the Bolton keeper, but Poll's decision was that the contact had been contrived. Instead of avoiding the keeper, as he might have done, Fowler played for the penalty.

It was a conspicuous example of a referee thinking and acting for himself – and it is a model which provides the game's best hope of going into a new year with any kind of serious chance of restoring vital confidence in the judgement, and the independence of match officials.

Unfortunately, however, Poll's instinct can not be fed through the photocopying machine in the office of John Baker, the FA's head of refereeing.

Mr Baker's latest edict tells referees precisely what they have do in reaction to a whole series of infractions.

Example: "When a player strikes or pushes an opponent in the face with his hands or fist using excessive force it will be deemed unsporting behaviour and the player will be dismissed. When a player pushes an opponent in the chest in a manner that is not considered a violent act it will be deemed unsporting behaviour and the player will be cautioned."

What the missive does not say is at what point, if any, the referee's own judgement comes into play. The fact is that the referee's position can only be hopelessly compromised by a regime which insists he is locked into a set of stock judgements – and penalties. Football has laws, of course, and it is vital that the spirit of them is also preserved. But it is also a game of live passion, of human quirks, and of various levels of professional application. What in the past was never in question was that within one game there was another, one practised often cynically by professionals fully aware that there would always be thickets of action which even the best referees would be struggling to penetrate with anything better than a guess.

One old pro put it succinctly enough yesterday when he said: "However much you question the knowledge of some referees, and accept that in some areas the professional players will always try to get an advantage – you can't change the world, after all – you have to say that their job is becoming just about impossible. The best referees have always been those who got closest to the players without surrendering any of their authority. In my time Jack Taylor always managed to pull off that trick. He wasn't there to be taken for a ride, and he let you know that. But you always had a sense he was trying to be fair, and to capture the flow and the spirit of any particular game."

In the opinion of many good judges, none of today's officials got closer to that ideal than Dermot Gallagher recently when he appeared to touch the levels of Solomon in booking Leeds United's Robbie Keane and Manchester United's David Beckham after an eruption between the two. A superb game flowed on, with 11 men apiece, and without any deterioration in the discipline of the players. Gallagher's reward was a spell in the Nationwide Gulag.

The message of that affair still lingers oppressively in the game. It says that personal initiative and judgement cannot supercede a set of precise measurements of crime and punishment. No matter that the professional urge to pull a fast one has developed over the last couple years to the point where a striker may indeed suppress the natural urge to stay on his feet and regain possession of the ball, but deliberately push the ball forward with no greater ambition than making contact with some extremity of a desperate but otherwise innocent goalkeeper. The referee, in an age when the all-seeing eye of the television camera makes a mockery of the proposition, has to play god. Not only does he have to make a snap decision on something about which sometimes there can be no absolute truth, he also has to administer penalties by rote. Meanwhile, managers continue to defend the inexcusable if it is committed by their own players and television passes random judgement on the professional capability of the wretched official who finds himself in the middle of the latest storm.

What is needed, so urgently, is of course not new directives but a new spirit. While the paperwork piles up, football edges a little closer to anarchy. Diving is bad, no doubt, but there is a deeper problem way beyond the power of a diktat. There is only one long-term solution. It is for players and managers and referees to become part of the same game.