Torquay United Fans Forum

I'd suggest you read it a third time, but I'm not one for a fools errand.

Matt.

You cannot blame the referees for AVOIDABLE bookings as outlined by TRojan and whether you like it or not a yellow or red card, justified or not , is not irrelevant

Read my reasoning again.

No It is not irrelevant. Losing players through red cards and accumulation of yellow cards can make a big differences to the club's position at the end of the season. Many bookings are avoidable as mentioned by Trojan. Referees do make poor decisions of course but these are not confined to Torquay although the number of bookings may influence referees.
The answer is in the manager's hands. He should fine any player making a bad and unnecessary tackle resulting in a red card.

With the present standard of officiating in our division, our disciplinary record is completely irrelevant. Officials make it up as they go, so that we're officially the nastiest team means literally nothing. We've seen Ryan Bowman sent off for "headbutting" an opponent, yet Joe Hart does the very same thing TO A REFEREE in a televised match and it's ignored.
We have had players booked for time wasting when no other side in the league ever suffers the same fate. We've had Downes sent off seemingly for the offence of 'being near an opponent'
At least three times this season Bowman has been scythed down when clean through on goal and the referee has waved play on.

We've made mistakes, of course. Downer's dreadful lunge on the Telford bloke right at the end was certainly a red. A couple of Luke Young's bookings have been "ones for the team" and a chunk of the rest have been perfectly fair, but some have been completely inexplicable.

The way the game is today, a single referee assisted by two linesmen cannot possibly hope to be sufficient to properly umpire a football match. They make up this shortfall by guessing. This season, entirely at random, this guesswork has lead to us being penalised most heavily of all. It'll be someone else's turn next year.

Matt.

[quote="Trojan 67"]

Avoidable booking offences are, among others : dissent; timewasting; removing shirt/running into spectator areas during goal celebrations and kicking the ball away.

Duane O', the thick plank, in his first game back from suspension gets booked for kicking the ball away numerous previous bookings for? You've guessed it : kicking the ball away. It's obvious he's not been fined £100 a booking because he still does it!

Plank.

:@[/quote]

Good job I'm not manager, he'd have a £100 fine and be running laps of the training pitches at 7am Monday morning. Silly bookings like those mentioned really get my goat, along with being caught offside at set pieces. Stupid bloody footballers!

[quote="njgull"]I would really love to know what's in a dossier on how to avoid bookings.

[color=#FF0000][b][i]"Don't commit bookable offences."[/i][/b][/color]

[/quote]

Avoidable booking offences are, among others : dissent; timewasting; removing shirt/running into spectator areas during goal celebrations and kicking the ball away.

Duane O', the thick plank, in his first game back from suspension gets booked for kicking the ball away numerous previous bookings for? You've guessed it : kicking the ball away. It's obvious he's not been fined £100 a booking because he still does it!

Plank.

:@

I would really love to know what's in a dossier on how to avoid bookings.

"Don't commit bookable offenses."

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. Carry on.

I trust they gave the same dossier to the refs who 'control' Conference fixtures :)

Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk

Meanwhile, as United prepare for tomorrow’s league game at Wrexham, they have received a ‘calm down’ briefing from the Conference over their disciplinary record.

The Gulls are top, or bottom if you like, of the ‘bad boys’ table, so Hargreaves and chairwoman Thea Bristow attended a meeting with Conference officials in Birmingham on Wednesday.

“It wasn’t a carpeting,” stressed Hargreaves, “more a general chat, and we’ve now passed on what they said to the players for the future.

“We pointed out that we have the youngest team in the league, only four of our 67 bookings have been for dissent and there’s no malicious pattern in our bookings.

“Of course, we do need to improve our record, and the Conference gave us a dossier to help us to do that.”

Whilst I would describe you as a Physical side I would not say that you were a dirty side in either game against us. On saying that most sides in this League are physical and without any doubt the dirtiest team I have seen to date is Halifax. Sendings off happen as do bookings and in this league generally it seems the Officials are inconsistent. They seem to let teams "rough" it up a bit but then will suddenly produce a red or yellow card for incidents they have let go all game. This must make it very difficult for players to know how exactly to play to avoid as far as possible being booked or sent off.
My own feeling on taking players off is that if the booking happens early on and the player appears to have lost control then I think he should be substituted because there is nothing worse than an early reduction to 10 men. I think our player was taken off yesterday because he was crap rather than because he was booked!!

Yes you're right, a poor disciplinary record will build a bad reputation for the team and club. I've read opposition fans forum after every game we've played and seen us described as a horrible, dirty and nasty team on almost every forum, it's something that does need sorting out, but, on the flip side a team can be to nice also.

You're right also, I personally hate to see managers constantly on the side lines shouting at the referee, it does filter through to the players, and you often get a situation where the players start to follow the managers lead and start protesting every decision when they should just be focusing on the game.

As for the Rovers manager taking a player off with a yellow card, none of us know whether that's actually why the player was taken off, normally a manager doesn't simply take a player off purely because he's on a yellow card, they would only take a player off on a yellow because the player wont calm down or is continuing to make reckless challenges.

Did Chris Hargreaves make a mistake in not taking MacDonald off, no. Do I think he should have taken MacDonald off, no. I back CH for leaving Gus on the pitch, you may or may not have been at the match, I was and I'm sure all would agree the back four were working superbly together as a unit all game long, so why take a player off because he's on a yellow, had Pearce come on made a mistake and Rovers had scored, what we be saying now. Why did CH take of Gus who was playing well.

[quote="Sesimbra"]United's disciplinary record this season is appalling. Although I haven't the statistics they must be near if not top of the poor disciplinary table. This is a great shame as over the years it is my belief that United have been considered a fair side.
Looking at the BBC Sport stats after matches United always seem to have made more fouls than the opposition. It cannot always be blamed on the referees and there cannot be many more teams with yellow and red cards this season.
This poor discipline is self defeating as I suspect Torquay have built up a reputation as a dirty side and the referees are influenced accordingly.
[b]My view is that Hargreaves must deal with this problem immediately[/b] otherwise more loss of points will occur.
As an aside I noticed that the Rovers Manager on New Year's day took off a player who had a yellow card. Hargreaves could have done the same with Pearce on the bench but ignored it.[/quote]I think it comes from Hargreaves. When you see his antics during or after a game that has been drawn or lost, he doesn't seem a nice person to be around and has had frequent rants at officials.

In his and the teams defence though, there have been numerous ludicrous decisions that have went against him/them this season and not too many that I can recall that have went their way. I'm not excusing it but it must be frustrating when your plans are getting destroyed by total incompetence. I know that the officials have a very difficult job to do but I've seen some decisions that are so obvious to everyone bar it seems them.

It also should be remembered that not only is it a young team, but CH is a youngish, inexperienced manager and personally I thing the biggest lesson he has yet to learn is to keep stum more when these things go against him.

United's disciplinary record this season is appalling. Although I haven't the statistics they must be near if not top of the poor disciplinary table. This is a great shame as over the years it is my belief that United have been considered a fair side.
Looking at the BBC Sport stats after matches United always seem to have made more fouls than the opposition. It cannot always be blamed on the referees and there cannot be many more teams with yellow and red cards this season.
This poor discipline is self defeating as I suspect Torquay have built up a reputation as a dirty side and the referees are influenced accordingly.
My view is that Hargreaves must deal with this problem immediately otherwise more loss of points will occur.
As an aside I noticed that the Rovers Manager on New Year's day took off a player who had a yellow card. Hargreaves could have done the same with Pearce on the bench but ignored it.