Football. Referees. Glasses.

The most relieved man in football right now must be Stuart Attwell. Yes, he who gave a goal to Reading that didn’t exist and then ruled out one for Derby that did, must have enjoyed watching last weekend’s highlights of the Championship.
The reason for his joy was Rob Shoebridge. He was probably enjoying the summer sunshine at Ashton Gate last Saturday when Freddie Shears, the on-loan Palace striker, barged through the Bristol City defence and smashed the ball in.
Shears and his teammates celebrated, the crowd was silenced and the City defence looked crestfallen and started the trudge back towards the half way line. It was 1-0.
Until, that is, Shoebridge decided neither he nor his linesman had actually seen the ball go in. So he decided not to bother giving Palace their goal and waved play on. Cue pandemonium.
Shears’ mistake was to kick the ball so hard it hit the back of the goal and bounced back out, but even to the naked eye it was clear what had happened.
Which is just as well, because as blatantly obvious as it makes the call for video technology to be introduced, Fifa aren’t interested. They would rather see four refs, bigger goals and kick-ins instead of throw-ins than actually introduce something that might improve the game.
At least the Professional Game Match Officials have learnt from Attwell’s blunders last season. Shoebridge and his linesmen were suspended immediately and an apology issued to Neil Warnock, the Palace manager, which went down as well as you imagine it would have done, especially as Palace lost 1-0 to an 89th minute goal.
How these things can still happen is beyond me. 16,403 supporters saw it. 22 players saw it and two managers plus benches saw it. Yet the people that matter somehow didn’t but, according to the game’s rule makers, that’s okay. It would take seconds to check – less than the time it takes for players to stop haranguing the referee.
Like the Reading players who acted dumb last year, the City players are due no credit for their part, taking the old adage of playing to the whistle way too far. Any hope that comes with a new season that football might show an ounce of self respect disappeared there and then.
Harry Redknapp summed it up perfectly. “Fifa won’t let us have cameras on the goal line, so what’s to stop a fourth official from looking at his monitor for 20 seconds?
“It’s the 21st Century, how long since we had a man on the moon?”
Right now, that’s probably where Shoebridge wishes he was.