Seeing Red. Graham Poll
going to referee the 2000 Final. Now it was my turn to be the principal guest at the Rally, but I was concerned it would end too late.
Peter Jones – we shall meet him again during my story – had been the Cup Final ref in 1999 and told me that he did not get back to his hotel from the Rally until just before midnight. He had to deal with a queue of people wanting autographs. He admitted that it was not ideal preparation for his big day.
So I asked to change a couple of things. I said that I’d arrange for the four match officials to autograph all the 200 or so programmes for the event in advance. Nobody would have to queue up at the end for signatures. And I said that I wanted to speak at the beginning of the function, rather than at the conclusion, so that I could leave in time for a proper night’s rest.
Some of the blazer brigade thought it was sacrilege to alter the schedule. They concluded – like many before and since – that Graham Poll was arrogant. I could argue that my need to prepare properly was the opposite of arrogance. But most people have already made up their mind about me.
Something else made the chaps in blazers splutter with indignation. Darren Drysdale, one of the assistant referees, had recently become engaged. He and his fiancée, Wendy, couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Eventually I had to say, ‘Can you give it a rest please? Or get a room.’
He replied, ‘We can’t help it. We’re in love.’ Obviously, I did not tell the other match officials about that at the first opportunity or take the mickey out of him in any way at all. I returned to the Hendon Hall Hotel at a respectable hour and had a good sleep. I can’t tell you whether I dreamed or not – but then I had been dreaming of refereeing the FA Cup Final for nearly twenty years.
On the big day, I was determined to follow the advice of previous Final refs and seep myself in the atmosphere. They said they had enjoyed standing on the balcony, between Wembley’s old twin towers, watching both sets of supporters walking towards the stadium along Empire Way. But when I stood there in 2000, Villa supporters who spotted me started to sing vile songs about my alleged allegiance to Chelsea. Joe Guest advised us to leave the balcony. I was grievously disappointed. Thanks, News of the World.
Then, in the dressing rooms, I did something else to outrage the blazer blokes – another break with tradition. FA official Adrian Titcombe always led the two teams out. The referee, assistants and fourth official brought up the rear. Over the years, when I had watched this, I felt it was wrong. I thought that it undervalued the referee and his team. So I asked that the FA follow their own regulation, which stipulated that the referee should lead out the teams. For the sake of every ref who has taken charge of Finals since, I am glad that I won that little amendment to the protocol.
The last FA Cup Final at the old Wembley was the seventy-second, and was decided by a goal in the seventy-second minute. Neither the game nor the goal was memorable. Gianfranco Zola took a free-kick for Chelsea, Villa goalkeeper David James fumbled the ball, knocking it against the chest of defender Gareth Southgate, and Roberto Di Matteo thumped the lose ball into the roof of the net. Di Matteo had scored the quickest goal in an FA Cup Final (forty-two seconds) three years earlier when Chelsea beat Middlesbrough 2–0. This time, in 2000, his goal was suitably scrappy for a poor game, and the most prestigious appointment of my domestic career was not a great occasion for me either.
In fact, it was a horrid, bitter experience. It was soured utterly by that News of the World article and the way some Villa players used the story to try to put me under pressure. During the game, Villa players repeatedly made snide remarks inferring that I was biased. They said things like, ‘There’s two teams playing, Pollie. Not one.’ They said, ‘Come on, be fair.’ They hoped that, subconsciously, I would want to prove that I was not favouring Chelsea. They were hoping that I would react by giving the next marginal decision to Villa. And I am pretty sure that they had been told to use that tactic, because the players who did it the most were the right-back, the central midfielder and the left-forward. Because referees run a diagonal path throughout a match, those were the players I most often found myself near. I believed they had been instructed to target me.
The indignation I felt – the outrage – was because the allegation behind their remarks attacked my basic integrity. I had worked for twenty years to referee the Cup Final. It was my big occasion. Yet they were saying I was dishonest. Every little comment they made was like a slap in the face.
Then, right at the finish, when the teams were waiting to go up to collect their medals, a member of the Villa backroom staff said to me, ‘You f***ing Chelsea fan. You c***.’ That was the last straw. The comment touched a raw nerve. I confronted him and although I have never been someone who hits people, I honestly think I might at least have grabbed him if Joe Guest had not intervened. That would have given the News of the World a real story.
Then, as I climbed the famous thirty-nine steps to collect my own medal, the Villa fans booed and repeated the News of the World’s false allegation. Peter Jones said the finest moment of his life – of his life! – was at the end of the 1999 Cup Final. In the moment before he left the pitch, he looked back at the scene, with the winning team doing their lap of honour and the fans cheering. He opened the presentation box in his hand, looked down at his medal, and thought, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ On my big day, the Villa fans were at the tunnel end and so I left the arena to catcalls from people suggesting that I was biased.
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