Seeing Red. Graham Poll
his whistle this summer and that’s brought nothing but glee at Stamford Bridge.
One top Blues star said: ‘No one here is sad to see the back of him. He always had to be the centre of attention.
‘He was at it again when we played Manchester United. He confronted José Mourinho on the touchline and was obviously playing up to the cameras, it was embarrassing.
‘What’s sad is that he fancied himself as one of the top referees around, but he’ll be remembered as the ref who gave three yellow cards to the same player at the World Cup. What a joke!’
Well, Rob got my age right.
The day after the Stamford Bridge game, the referees gathered at Staverton for one of their fortnightly sessions of analysis and training. I told the others about Senhor Mourinho’s rant. We had a discussion about the behaviour of managers in their technical areas, because Keith Hackett, our manager, wanted a crackdown on all the swearing and abuse for the following season. Several top referees told the meeting that none of them took action against inappropriate comments, language or behaviour in the technical area because the FA would not back them. I agreed completely. That tells you all you need to know about the state of the game and how referees felt abandoned by the Football Association.
As far as I was concerned personally, in the course of six days I had experienced the exhilaration of performing at the peak of my powers in Seville and the degradation of being foully derided at Chelsea. Both matches confirmed my view that it was time for me to finish refereeing.
The rumour that I was retiring had found its way into newspapers. Quite a few people knew my plans by then and I suppose it was inevitable that the news would get out, but it caused a few anxious days. I had been told that I would referee the Football League’s Championship promotion Playoff Final at the rebuilt Wembley. Would the fact that I was retiring make the authorities reconsider?
Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League and effectively the man who made the decisions about the professional referees, telephoned. He asked, ‘Is it true?’ I told him it was indeed true that I was retiring. I made it clear that it was not because of Chelsea. It was a decision I had made because I no longer enjoyed refereeing. He said, ‘Well, then it is the right decision. But I am sorry to hear it. The Play-off Final at Wembley is an appropriate end for you and a way for football to thank you for all you have done.’
My final Premiership match was Portsmouth versus Arsenal. There had been heavy rain, but the pitch was playable and I just conducted my normal, routine inspection. However, because of the accurate speculation that it was my last Premiership match, there were fifteen photographers following me as I walked out to look at the pitch and apparently someone commented on radio that, typically, I was milking the moment. Yet one of the reasons I had tried to keep my retirement secret was that I did not want the last games to become a circus.
I disallowed a ‘goal’ for the home team by Niko Kranjcar for offside. Television later proved it was the correct decision and the match finished scoreless. If Portsmouth had won, they would have qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in their history but, because the match was a draw, they finished ninth in the table and Bolton went into Europe instead.
Now, one way of reporting those events would have been to say, ‘Graham Poll made a correct decision which ensured Bolton justly earned a place in the UEFA Cup.’ But, back in the real world again, everyone took the line that I had cost Portsmouth their European adventure. Many reports said I had got the decision wrong and most added the implication that I enjoyed the notoriety the decision had caused in my final Premiership fixture. The Guardian’s headline was, ‘Fingers point at Poll as European dream dies’.
There were other important games on that final day of the Premiership season, especially those at the foot of the table which determined who was relegated. There were other big refereeing decisions that day. Yet the only referee whose name was in the headlines the next day was Graham Poll.
Again, it provided more confirmation that it was time to go. There was no possibility that I would ever again be treated evenhandedly by the media. I was Graham Poll, the man who had blundered at the World Cup and who was ‘always seeking controversy’. The easy, lazy way of reporting my matches was to focus on one of my decisions, say that I had got it wrong and suggest I had done it to get the headlines. I was going to walk away from refereeing earnings of about £90,000 a year but, as I had told Richard Scudamore, I was no longer enjoying it.
Yet my penultimate match was a cracker. The League One play-off semi-final second leg between Nottingham Forest and Yeovil at Forest’s City Ground saw the advantage swing one way and then the other. It went into extra-time and ended with Yeovil winning 5–2 on the night for a 5–4 aggregate victory. Yeovil had been playing in the Conference only four years before yet they had beaten Forest, who had been European champions twice. I had to send off Forest’s David Prutton for two cautions but nobody could quibble with the decision and it was a truly spellbinding match that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Then, as the days ticked away towards my final game, some of the top men in refereeing became nervous. By then, my imminent retirement was an open secret and they thought I might give an explosive interview before the last match, or make some grand gesture during the action (I am not sure what – perhaps they thought I would leap and head in a goal, although they wouldn’t have thought that if they’d ever seen me play). I was upset that they even thought those things. In fact, the precise opposite was true. I fended off all approaches from the media before my final match because I wanted to ensure that the fixture – between West Brom and Derby – was about the clubs and their fans, not about the referee.
Six days before the West Brom–Derby game, I was a guest of Vodafone at the Champions League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan in Athens. My hosts paid me a fee to referee a little match between the media and some of their other guests and to host a pre-match Q & A with Teddy Sheringham. But when they suggested I might take part in a press conference, I had to say ‘No’. All the questions would have been about my retirement and if I had answered honestly, then my last game would have become the circus I was trying to avoid.
And so, after twenty-seven seasons, I reached my final game, match 1554, at Wembley – and I make no apologies at all for being absolutely, utterly, overjoyed to bow out at the national stadium. There were three reasons for that feeling. Firstly, I was still the official the authorities wanted to referee a game worth at least £52 million to the winning club. Richard Scudamore, Keith Hackett and the rest were confident in my ability to take charge of that match and that meant a lot to me. It gave me a sense of pride. I see no reason to apologize for that. Secondly, it was natural for me to want to referee at the ‘new’ Wembley. I had taken charge of the last FA Cup Final in 2000 before they pulled down the old stadium and of course, like every other football fan in the country, I wanted to experience the new place. Thirdly, it provided the perfect way of saying ‘thank you’ to some important people. I scrambled around getting tickets and managed to ensure that, as well as Julia and our children, my mum and dad, two of my sisters and some friends were there to share my last big occasion as a referee. It was profoundly important to me that my mum and dad, who were there when my refereeing career started, were there when it finished.
I am delighted to report that it finished well. The match officials were put up at the Hendon Hall Hotel, which was where I had been before ‘my’ FA Cup Final and which has a unique place in English football history because it was where the England team stayed before the 1966 World Cup Final. Staying there in 2007 gave the occasion a special feel for me, but I can honestly say that I was not at all emotional. The time had come to call time on my career, and it just felt right.
People who were in on the increasingly unsecret secret about my retirement noted that I sung the national anthem lustily that day at Wembley, but those who knew me well realized that I always did. Belting out ‘God Save The Queen’ was my way of forcing out any last-minute nerves. I will admit that I could not look across to where I knew my mum was sitting, however. She had said to me, ‘Think of me when you sing the anthem.’ So I knew she’d be looking and that if we had made eye contact, I would have lost it. I will also concede that when I stood