We had some who were consistently crap.Gurnam Singh,G Laws a Mr Pugh from the Wirral.Not forgeting Trevor Kettle and Eddie Ilderton.
Willard, and not purely because of the Liverpool shambles. He was just as biased at Hillsborough that season. Di Canio should have been sent off before half time, yet kept on cheating and moaning and gesticulating. Inevitably scored the winner last minute. I believe we'd have won the Liverpool game with any other referee in charge, so that's four points we were robbed of by Willard.
To be fair I was never a rennie fan but Anthony kay was sent off for a neck high challenge which looked awful when I watched it back, and Neil Austin shoved I think coppinger over the advertising hoardings. The second might be deemed a bit harsh, coppinger made the most of it, but neither were in the realms of cheating like Willard. Other refs would have made the same decisions, right or wrong. Willard though was reffing Liverpool on their big time Charlie reputations, had Paul ince in his ear all game about how dirty we were and acted accordingly. Useless, cheating barsteward. We'd have had three points that day, at least one at hillsborough, maybe all three given we'd have had a full half against ten men. At least 4, maybe 6 points more. We were relegated by 5 points. (And a shitload of goal difference), 6 would have kept us up. Ah well. If we could change history and all that
Obviously the ineptitude of willards performance in the match was a disgrace but to run away and hide whilst leaving your linesmen there was cowardice to the extreme. The man lacked moral fibre and that's unforgivable in any walk of life. Juwing the wowa he'd have been shot
It was. The previous season, Cooper was sent off by Gerald Ashby against Port Vale. Think Ashby was also the ref who sent off Stephen Clemence when we played Spurs in the cup.
Most clearly bent and biased: Willard Most incompetent: Kettle (every game) Most racist: whoever sent off half the Chengdu blades in a friendly without any bad tackles. Most cowardly: d'urso. Not just for allowing the elbow but for not having the balls to admit his mistake later
Yep, the 1-1 draw. John Jeffers had been winding Coops up all afternoon and the ref did nowt. Coops tried to "tackle" him, and his boot ended up somewhere near Jeffers' arse. Contact was practically non-existent, but the mentalist ref sent Coops off anyway, which he'd been dying to do all game it seemed.
The saga of lousy refs started for me in the 1950s with Jack Kelly of Chorley. I don't know what he had against us, but we got nothing, ever, from him. When his name was in the programme, we had lost. There have been some real stinkers since, but Willard is stratospheric compared to the rest. I've never seen such a biased and cowardly display that day he turned out in a Liverpool shirt. I heard somewhere that he actually trains or mentors referees now. Can that be true??? If so, no wonder we get so many absolute dummies. I've often wondered how much football these characters have ever played; they just don't seem able to read the game and know what is really going on. And don't get me on about linesmen. I refuse to call them assistant referees because they don't assist in most cases. They seem to think that raising a flag to confirm the ref's decision is the thing to do. I always thought they were supposed to bring to the ref's attention anything that he might have missed. Some chance of that. The shop-window ornament at the East Stand side last Saturday was gazing benignly while Sunderland players placed the ball almost a foot out of the quadrant at corners. And as for foul throws..........(choking sound and falls off chair, but manages to catch beer.)