Poll-axed
Earlier today, FIFA organised a cull of the men in black who’ve been weakening the referees’ gene pool at the World Cup. They set their sights on Graham Poll and deemed him unfit to participate in the latter stages of the tournament.
The Englishman’s red card pecadillo during the South Korea-Togo match seems to have been overlooked. Poll would have been allowed to officiate in further games had it not been for his disastrous on-field performance last Thursday.
The Group F decider between Croatia and Australia was always going to be an interesting tie. With Australia’s Croatian-born players on one side and Croatia’s Australian-born players on the other, the game had an incestuous quality that called for dungarees instead of football strips. And in addition to all this, Poll made the game compelling with a series of terrible decisions.
He sent off three players in total: Croatia’s Josip Ŝimunić - the last of the trio to leave the pitch - was the pantomine villain of the piece. In the 6th minute, he wrestled Mark Viduka to the ground; Poll was the only person in the stadium who didn’t think it was a penalty.
In fairness, Poll did award a spot-kick to the Aussies in the 14th minute, after Stjepan Tomas palmed the ball in the area. However, having been tried and found guilty of the offence once, Tomas was allowed to handle the ball on two further occasions without the award of a penalty. Poll’s double jeopardy policy cost Australia all three points.
The worst was yet to come.
Despite a series of unpleasant challenges, Ŝimunić survived until the 62nd minute without being booked. He was shown his second yellow card in the last minute of normal time and a third three minutes after that! Poll forgot to send off the defender after the second booking. Quite an achievement for a man with a notebook and pen in his pocket.
In a World Cup that’s been a bit lacking in unusual incident, I’ll miss Poll, even if no-one else will.