Henry Hutt Trophy

Most of you will be aware of the Henry Hutt Trophy, an award to the member who has, in the opinion of the membership, contributed most to the society during the last year.  Usually the vote is taken at the final meeting of the season by the members present on the night.  This year it was felt that it should be opened up to the whole membership, whether present or not.  This means that if you cannot attend the meeting you can register your vote by contacting John Brown before the day.  Of course you can still vote on the night if you are attending.

Previous winners are listed on the inside back cover.


FA Cup Final Tickets

This year we had three Cup Final tickets, for which we had a draw at the April meeting.  Members who were interested put their names into a hat, well, box in this case, and were draw as follows; Roger Pink two tickets, Steve Rogers one ticket.

This was after Chelsea and Aston Villa had already won their semi-finals so they knew what the were letting themselves in for.

Ref Bashing!

I sometimes wonder what managers would say if they didn't have a referee to blame for the shortcomings of their team.  Paul Durkin, officiating at the West Ham v Arsenal match, judges a situation as 'Ball to hand'. This is a reasonable judgement and one that we make every game as referees.

At the conclusion of the match (very soon after the incident from which the winning goal was scored) furious West Ham players surrounded Mr. Durkin in an intimidating and abusive manner. Their manager, who seemed to think that their behavior was reasonable, supported their actions!

Professional players should be educated to set an example to the young men who follow the sport, not encouraged to show indiscipline and rank poor sportsmanship. The culture of outright cheating that prevails in professional football needs to be rooted out and replaced with sportsmanship.

It is simply not good enough to say that this is not a game, but the livelihood of the players concerned.  We know that this is how they put bread on their tables - sorry I mean petrol in their Ferraris - but it can still be accomplished within the rules of the game and with style and grace.

Such attitudes do not mean that players are not competitive and do not strive with all their being to outplay their opponents, of course they must if they are to succeed. It does mean that they should stop cheating by such actions as calling for the throw in when they know it is the opponents' ball. By holding on to shirts, arms, hair etc in an effort to impede unfairly knowing that the referee, at this level, is trying to keep the game flowing and will not stop play 'unnecessarily'.

I believe the time has come for the top leagues to insist that all the player's contracts contain a sportsmanship clause and that if they are found to have fallen below a set standard they should have to undergo suspension and retraining in the standards required. This may seem draconian but as the current crop of managers have all come from within the professional game - where they have been taught to cheat as a part of the game - we need to bring in outside quality control to raise the standards.

John Brown