Talk:Damien Hancock
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[edit] Poor quality of Eircom Premier League referees
In my opinion, Damien Hancock is a good example of the poor quality of domestic football refereeing in Ireland today. I have seen him referee two games this season which involved my home club, Shamrock Rovers and he gave a truly appalling performance in both of those.
Most Irish stadia are quite small and supporters are quite close to the pitch. They have almost as good a view as the referee in many cases and have the same view as the referees assistant (linesman). Some of the decisions made by this referee have to be seen to be believed. Together with his linesmen, Mr Hancock gets at least half of all his decisions badly wrong on the pitch. He has a tendency to stop the game so he can lecture players on their behaviour. While his is distracted giving his lectures he frequently misses serious foul play off the ball, while his back is turned. He is not helped by his linesmen who spend most of the game looking at their "hero" and also miss most incidents. As the game progresses this results in a progressive breakdown in discipline among the players who simply lose respect for him with each mistake.
While Mr Hancock is poor he is certainly not unique. The same poor standard of refereeing prevails at almost every Irish domestic fixture. The Eircom League has been trying to increase the number of supporters who come to local matches. As a relatively new supporter myself I can tell them that the universally appalling standard of refereeing at their games is the biggest turn - off for fans. Unless the Eircom League can address this problem and offer an improvement then it will never attain the standard of professionalism or critical mass of fan support it aspires to.
Edward McCann, Fag, Oct 3rd 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.43.89.125 (talk) 08:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
