What have we learned from numerous bad decisions this season

Every Wednesday in the Herald Express, our Torquay United correspondent Richard Hughes takes a sideways look at what's going on in the world of the Gulls. This week, he talks about referee decisions, again

When young striker Keke Jeffers headed the ball home to score what everyone in Plainmoor – including the Tonbridge Angels players – thought was the winning goal on Saturday, it was like a dream debut come true.

Signed on loan from Stoke City last week, manager Paul Wotton decided against starting with the 19-year-old because of a long trip to Torquay on Friday. But he put him on for the last 15 minutes in the hope he might be able to get the goal the performance deserved – but not the finishing.

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READ MORE: Torquay United have to get over disappointment of 'imaginary offside'

It has been a negative of Torquay’s first 15 games – I am writing this before game number 16 against Maidstone United on Tuesday night – that goals have been hard come by.

Cody Cooke has now scored six but the other strikers have struggled to light up the forward line so far, and before yesterday, Ben Seymour wasn’t even on the bench for the last two games. Brad Ash struggled against a strong Tonbridge defence before being replaced by Jeffers, who then failed to touch the ball until that header!

He did win the free kick though, being brought down as he ran to the ball – before touching it. And then, from the excellent Jordan Young free kick, he swooped into the back post with speed, skill and awareness to win a diving header – and presumably the game!

I called the referee’s assistant a destroyer of dreams in another piece for our sister website DevonLive. It didn’t look offside at the time and video evidence later showed Jeffers had come past at least FOUR Tonbridge players to get to the ball. It was a wonderful, wonderful, disallowed goal.

The young lad sitting in the press box next to me was the only representative from Tonbridge, and he was busy updating their X-feed throughout. He looked at me when I said “that’s never offside” and shook his head, wiping an imaginary piece of his sweat from his brow. He, like everyone from Tonbridge, was delighted with a point at Plainmoor.

But this wasn’t the only howler on the night. Matt Carson did really well to invade the box in the second half and was bundled over by a startled and careless defender. “Penalty!” we all shouted but the referee wasn’t bothered by the challenge and waved play off.
“Penalty!” I said again, but this time the Tonbridge kid shook his head in denial. I get it, that point was so important for them.

Paul Wotton said he was frustrated more than disappointed by the offside decision. He didn’t mention the penalty one. And he got booked so will now serve a suspension. He is getting pretty fed up with decisions going against his team.

Dom Mee, interviewing him after the game, suggested the old adage that “things even themselves up over a season” might be a stretch now. Wotton’s checkle said it all.

What have we learned from numerous bad decisions this season? That the officials at this level are rubbish? Probably not. They just aren’t quite good enough yet, and this is because we are playing our football at level 6, two divisions down into the non-league pyramid. Maybe it’s our fault, not theirs.

But the imaginary offside was so bad on Saturday you have to wonder how the assistant got it so wrong – and was the referee not aware of the situation enough to overrule him?

Writing this column for the paper on the morning of Tuesday night games is always tough. By the time you are reading this there might be another bad decision to be mulling over, regretting, rueing... And the ways things are going this season, you wouldn’t be surprised, would you?

Wotton suggested after the early-season questionable decisions by officials, that he “didn’t want to be that manager” – the one that moans about officials after every game. But, with decisions like Saturday’s, what are you going to do?