The man not in black anymore

Rob Styles retired from refereeing today. He's only 45 so he could have gone on for another few years had he wanted to, but apparently the pressure of reffing at the top was too much for him, so he's gone. Good! He was a poor, poor ref in my humble opinion, always seemed to want to be the centre of attention, always very eager to get his cards out of his pocket at less than a moment's notice, and was something of a homer to boot. I'm glad he's packed it in.

I know, I know, without referees we wouldn't have a game. Styles may have been poor generally and always seemed to get at least one crucial decision wrong per match, but we should be encouraging referees generally and one experienced ref less is nothing to celebrate..... Well sorry, but in Styles case the fact that he's retired is something to celebrate. From memory he only took charge of one Yeovil game, when he managed somehow to send off Gavin Williams of all people. Super Gav may be many things but one thing he is not is a dirty player and apart from the likes of Bobby Moore or Ryan Giggs it's hard to think of a player less likely to be sent off for anything, but Styles managed to do it. He certainly wasn't afraid to make decisions, the problem was that too many times those decisions were just plain wrong. Bye bye Rob, have a good retirement and please, don't change your mind.

Talking of referees makes me think of the standard of officiating in L1 generally and I have to say that on the whole last season it wasn't too bad overall. I'm struggling to recall more than a couple of games when I left at the end fuming at the man in the middle, most seemed to be competent enough on the whole. The biggest problem that I could see and the thing that leads to frustration amongst fans and players alike was a lack of consistency. But there, I guess if the refs at L1 level were as consistent as they should be then they'd be plying their trade in the Premiership. Just like Rob Styles did.... Oh.

Currently reading: Living Next Door to the God of Love by Justina Robson. I wanted to like this, I enjoyed Mappa Mundi by the same author, but I had to give it up as a bad job in the end, didn't even get halfway through it. A weird mix of fantasy, superheroes and hard sf but ended up as self-indulgent rubbish, albeit well-written self-indulgent rubbish. Ah well, you can't win them all.