This leads us nicely to Saturday's game at Westfield. New season, new hope. Having lost three of our elder statesmen at the end of last season, expectations were high for some of our "lesser promonent" officials to excel and shine.
Those hopes lasted all of about 10 minutes. John Underhill, who I have to add has had good games in the past, sadly was under par in my opinion. It became obvious from an early stage that the Falkirk centre half, Jonas Tiago, would be allowed to remove all persons in his path, with no fear of a yellow card. In one incident, he even managed to encourage Darren Dods to contemplate a career in horticulture, by assisting the big man's travel to the turf. Looked like a penalty, but no action was taken. Strange because he surely would have had to book Dods..... He did book three ICT players though, two perhaps justified, but the booking of Hislop was weird. Glennon threw the ball out and clkattered Hissy on the head. Only to find that, despite the ball allegedly being in open play, the ref decided this was an attempt to obstruct play, and book the striker.
Aided and abetted by some of the oddest offside decisions made by the far side linesman, the officials even managed to encur the wrath of the home support, when, despite Russell Latapy's excellent efforts to join the Olympic synchronised diving team, he missed what could have been construed as a penalty to the home side.
Overall, he had a reasonably quiet start to the season, with all four officials getting a mark of 5/10. This is mainly due to the performance of the stand side linesman who did indeed have a fine game.
Having witnessed some stranger refereeing decisions on TV, it would seem it's going to be a long-suffering season for those who watch the officials.
Iain Coia