Referee Halsey Dropped From Premier League After Wigan v Newcastle Fiasco
The latest list of referees for this weekend’s fixtures shows that Mark Halsey has been dropped into League One after his disaster at Wigan.
Halsey claimed his view of the McManaman/Haidara incident was blocked and if he had seen it he’d have sent the Wigan player off, however this hasn’t prevented him being sent down two divisions to referee Coventry v Doncaster this Friday.
Reassuringly, the dumbo linesman, Matthew Wilkes, will also join Halsey in refereeing that division one match. Wilkes was the one who because he informed the FA he had seen the ‘coming together’ though not the full impact/picture, meant the FA ‘rules’ prevented retrospective action against McManaman.
It remains to be seen whether this is a temporary demotion/slap on the wrist or something more permanent.
The reality is though that in the heat of the moment individuals can get things wrong but there is really no excuse for those at the top in the FA, who have all the time in the world to get decisions right in the aftermath, and instead choose to hide behind murky rules rather than dispense justice.
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