The men who blacken our game

THE can of worms has been opened.

In Friday's Birmingham Mail you'll read Tony Mowbray's comments about what he regards as a massive problem within football for smaller Premier League clubs.

You know how it is - newly-promoted club plays Big Four club and the referee wanders around being pally with the household names.

It'll be 'Frank this', or 'Cristiano that' or 'how are you Fernando'? That kind of nonsense.

We've heard the anecdotal remarks for so long, but nobody, certainly nobody in Mowbray's position, has really had the guts to speak out.

Until now it's remained a relatively taboo subject.

So good on Tony for coming out with it. He didn't name names. He doesn't need to. We see it every week in the Premier League.

But it was another story that reached me - not from Mowbray, but somebody else, I should add - which just about summed up the self-importance of the Premier League's officials.

A couple of years ago a string of top flight referees attended a Football function, which included some of soccer's most senior figures, including players, ex-players, managers and dignitaries.

As the main speeches got under way there was a respectful hush around the hall...apart from on one table.

While football's great and good from the modern and past eras looked around and tutted, the table of referees carried on being lairy, loud and generally obnoxious. This was, apparently, their show. Wine does that to some people.

The men in black, including one Rob Styles, were apparently so loud that a prominent football manager felt the need to leave his own table, wander over and tell them to, for want of a better phrase, 'shut up'.

The officials were lucky - Sir Alex Ferguson refrained from giving them the full hairdryer treatment.

And it just goes to show that these people need bringing down a peg or two.

Nobody attends football matches to watch a referee. No one has any desire to talk about the referee after the game. Yet they dominate phone-ins, message boards and pub discussions. It shouldn't be like that.

These men can ruin games, careers and effectively ruin the entertainment for the fans.

Let's hope Tony Mowbray's voice is heard.

It's time referees - some, not all - were taken to task.

More to the point, let's hope one of football's biggest taboos is finally picked apart.