Michael

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐘𝐨𝐮, 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 The club would like to place on record its sincere thanks to Danny Patterson, who departs after having served as both a player and Assistant Player Manager. Danny leaves the club on a high, adding yet another league title to an ever‑expanding trophy cabinet and once again demonstrating the winning mentality that has been a hallmark throughout time at the club. Showing his unrelenting drive for success he played a huge part in helping push the club forward and ultimately achieve promotion to Step 5. First Team Manager Chris Woodhead said: “It’s been a pleasure to work with Danny as both player and assistant. Danny brings a wealth of experience and, throughout the last couple of seasons, has shown real passion and a winning mentality. I’m glad Danny got to end a playing career on a high by winning the UCL Division One title and wish every success in future endeavours moving forward.” While this marks the end of a playing chapter, the club is certain this won’t be the last seen of Danny in the game. With ambitions to move into a managerial role, retirement from playing is simply the start of the next challenge. Everyone at the club thanks Danny for his service and wishes nothing but success for the future.

What a day!!

This is actually a very interesting post. When I worked at the FA as a referee coach, I would analyse how many refs from my group gave cards when an assessor was there and compared that to when there wasn’t. Over the 7 years I proved you were 3 times more likely to get a yellow card when there was an assessor present. Now this is not the assessors fault although some do have their own idiosyncrasies so you had to manage the assessor sometimes. It was also clear that many refs “over ref” when an observer/ assessor is present and “under ref” when they were not. Why? You may say. Well club marks counted as part of promotion so clubs didn’t want cards (wether they were correct or not) if you did they would mark you low. Clubs need to take responsibility as well as refs for this. Also and this is important, the head of refereeing back then said he expected a range from 70-73 for most games. Interestingly, if you had that average mark as a ref at the end of the season, you would get demoted. This meant refs went looking for cards and were “busy” to get better marks. This legacy is still there. Clubs marks mean less at some levels but if clubs were less emotional about refs performance this trend would never be there. Some assessors also would never or seldom mark over the “expected standards” as they would get pulled up by the head of refereeing for marking too high. They never got pulled up for marking too low.🤔 Some observers/assessors just would not give high marks so refs would cry off their games when they saw who was assessing and some assessors where friends of the ref they were assessing and they never stated their conflict. There was also a ref who’s Dad was the assessors appointments officer and he got looked after. When he got to the next level where the father had no “connections” nor influence the ref was found wanting and was just not prepared and ready for that level. There is no silver bullet for this but recently the FA give more credence for game management and are certainly more aware of the problem. It must still be noted that clubs don’t appear to mark refs fairly so this trait will all ways be in place. There is a lot to this subject and it’s always been the way that some great refs are passed over for promotion by refs who are not as good as them but have connections.