FA Guidelines for Referees

By alan ainsworth (legacy user)31/1/2014 13:33Fri Jan 31 13:33:56 2014In response to Waterlogged pitches

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Referees don't have to abide by FA guidelines.
They may even get away with being liberal at this level.
Applying common sense might be regarded as a tad subversive in the Corridors of Power, though.
In the days when I used to watch 100+ professional games a season, comfortably the best referee in the Football League was Terry Heilbron. He appeared on the Football league list, as if by magic, when he was the wrong side of forty. In a brief career, he seemed to get an almost farcical number of play-off finals and high-profile league games. He even got the League Cup final. However, the grapevine suggested he occasionally picked-up some comical assessors' marks, due to his reluctance to flash cards and refusal to play to some of the more pedantic rules. Somebody up there liked him, but he didn't get to the Premier League list and never got a remotely decent FA Cup appointment. Someone told me he became an assessor after he retired, which is ridiculous.