So Pennington's red card was for hands to the neck in an act of trying to ward off Burgess. So maybe Lewis should have been red carded as well? Hands to the neck region trying to ward of Burgess. Where do you draw the line. And the ref for arms around the body. In jest.
It's the thing I hate most about football. If you get fouled and don't hit the ground you more than likely don't get the call so you have to do the theatrics.
The worst one for me is when a player screams in apparent agony, writhes on the ground while holding up an arm and flapping their hand, as if desperately waving for urgent medical attention because they've got a bone sticking out of their leg.
Better refs like Faghani and King at least have decent bullshark detectors but for the rest it's often a lottery as to which way decisions will go.
It wasn’t a little bit of head to head though. Pennington was retreating and the Sydney player very aggressively continues to incite it.
It’s either both red or none.
That's the issue for me. You can argue a red for Pennington. But, by the same standard, why not a red for Burgess?
The same for Kraev. I think the two yellows were not totally unreasonable. You can debate that. But if you apply the standard that gave Kraev two yellows then I think Sydney got away with a lot, without cards.
It's interesting to think what the call would have been if Pennington had simply put his hands in the air to make the point he was not engaging and continued to attempt to retreat. You'd think a yellow or worse for Burgess and nothing for Pennington.
Your last paragraph is exactly it. Pennington should've dropped to the floor holding his face. In a different league it would've been a red card for Burgess. (Although I doubt that would've happened yesterday.)
Of course we don't want players flopping to the floor, but here you see why they do it.
Unfortunately...they are professional players who get paid to win games....if they have to somewhat “act" to get a much better chance of winning games, and knowing it's allowed by the rule of the game, they would and should be doing that.
I may be a bit tough - see it as a possible opportunity for improvement. Our referee management strikes me as naive, a fair bit of the time, and a bit over emotional. And the Aussie teams are just the opposite. They're hard pros and will milk what they can.
Maybe this hard done by Kiwi club mentality doesn't help us some times.
I know, the refs seemingly are consistently biased in favour of the big/Aussie clubs, against the kiwi one. But I think less so in many cases, with the new full time pro refs. And I think we make it hard for ourselves sometimes.
Can the VAR over rule an on field call or only advise against a missed call?
theprof
From a refs point of view though, is guessing good enough to award a penalty? From his position he must have been confident he could see the ball, it didnt move after passing his right hand which was raised (no contact) from the head of the Sydney attacker the ball hits him in the arm/back - which the ref may not have seen but from then onwards there is no logical step to call hand ball. The arm isnt extended to take up space, it's not raised towards the ball, just balance after challenging for the header. How Evans goes from "I can't see the ball" to that's definately a pen!" is the issue I have, and then for VAR to support it is bizarre as it's an obvious error.
wow, surprised to hear him say this. i thought he was quite restrained during the match. i did like it when he became clearly aghast at what he was seeing from the officials.
personally i hate complaining about officials, but my opinion is that evans and the 4th official did appear to be blatantly 'motivated'.
