Ref Watch League Cup at Cheltenham

[Mick]

Man in charge of this match is Graham Horwood from Luton, just starting his 3rd year as a League referee and refereeing his first Southend away game. He has however made four visits to Roots Hall in his short League career and they weren't too bad. The most recent was the final home game of last season against, co-incidentally, Cheltenham. The other three were Rochdale in the cup and Bournemouth in the League the year before last and Hereford last year). So we have a 100% record with this official.

Average cards but he has a reputation of being a somewhat fussy referee.

On Saturday he presided over Gillingham's demolition of Swindon.

Assisting will be Chris Knowles and Geoff Law from Northants and Leicester respectively. Fourth official will be Paul Martin, also from Northants.

 

[Mick]

There appears to have been a last minute swap between the Cheltenham and nearby Bristol Rovers matches. We had the not usually very impressive Danny McDermid.

They probably realised that giving an Army captain a match involving Aldershot wasn't the best idea.

 

[Suffolk Blue]

Even less impressive than last time I saw him. Booked Francis for simulation when he and a Cheltenham guy appeared to get their legs tangled and he tumbled over.

Very, very fussy and appeared to have a particular problem with Barney who was penalised for having his marker jumping all over him and hugging him at every opportunity. All strikers are guilty of backing in to some degree, but I think Barney was only given one of these decisions all night.

He also gave Grant a good talking to for kicking the ball away after an offence and then completely ignored far more blatant examples of this by Chelts for the remainder of the match.

On the other hand he let a deliberate kick from Macca go unnoticed so his incompetencies probably balance out over the course of a match.