Opiniated Poll
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On his retirement as a referee it would appear that Graham Poll as chosen to write a book not about his life but as an opportunity to put his side of the story about many of the controversial episodes in his refereeing career. Fair enough. Unfortunately though, this gets a bit wearing after a while and, as a result, I found this book it to be a little dull.
It gets off to a slow start when far too much time is spent going over the events of a now largely forgotten Chelsea v Spurs game from a few years ago and, to me, really picks up after that.
Amongst football watchers, Graham Poll was never the most popular referee in the game, and this book makes it clear that he wasn't held in very high regard by many of his fellow referees neither. Whilst he says that much of the dislike was unfair, on reading this book I can understand why as he comes across as being very opinionated and, at times, self important.
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Congratulations Mr Poll
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I found this book to be a very enjoyable read. I think it is very effective in not only exploring Graham Poll's life as a referee but also in giving more detail about his life away from football. The book is written very well and is very easy to pick up and read for hours. I think this has to be one of the most enjoyable books around at the moment. I would recommend it to anybody.
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Celebrity Refs
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When I first started watching football the referee was the man in black who blew the whistle. He wasn't a celebrity and we often didn't even know his name. Those days are well behind us with Messrs Ellerary, Winter and Poll all treating us to tales from the middle. I am like many football fans, totally biased to my own team and quick to blame the ref for the team's shortcomings. Therefore I was interested to read "Pollie's" story and initially had a degree of sympathy for him as he seemed to be unfairly maligned by one camp or the other for anything which contributed to a team's downfall. However, I felt he milked the mistake at the World Cup and had in mind the phrase "get over it". No one died and ultimately it made no material difference to the outcome of the match and the only reason I could discern for Mr Poll's misery was that he clearly believed he was destined to referee the final. Egotistical, arrogant, self-important - yes probably a little of all but don't pretend you didn't enjoy the fame/notoriety which went with it, Graham. For all that I quite enjoyed the book as it gave a different view of life in the beautiful game.
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Poll,s position
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Graham Poll winds up a lot of football fans , mainly because they perceive that he was more interested in being the star of the show than the players, though when you are refereeing Robbie Savage I think that's fair enough but more about the richly bouffanted Savage later. This perception is shared by a fair few managers as well , such as Neil Warnock which is bit rich coming from him .Yet I,ve always thought he was a good ref and seemed a decent bloke and this book confirms I was right. In fact it's fair to say that this book and his measured performances on Score and Football Focus have made me really warm to the guy.
Seeing Red could be considered an educational book as it opens up the readers eyes to the requirements needed to be a professional referee. It also points out that a lot of the criticism received by referee's is based on misunderstandings of the rules and that even top pundits are not adverse to this. There is also lots of meandering about UEFA and FIFA politics and his striving to get to the top of the refereeing ladder which is all a bit dull in truth. So to some extent this is a fairly dry book.
However it's worth persevering with the more mundane sections to get to the real juicy stuff. Thus Poll sheds light on his dealings with players and managers. His fractious relationship with Jose Mourinho who he feels modelled Chelsea in his own image turning them into the snarling bad losers they are. John Terry's behaviour , as portrayed in this book , underlines his unsuitability as England captain, while David Beckham and Steven Gerrard seem to be thoroughly decent chaps. Which is not something you could claim for Robbie Savage. As if the hair, thuggish on field demeanour and general air of gittishness weren't enough Poll tells the tale of toiletgate and further confirms, if indeed it needs confirming , that Savage is a bell end of considerable magnitude. There are also terrific anecdotes about, Neil Warnock , Roy Keane , Patrick Viera, Alex Ferguson and fellow refs Paul Durkin and Pierre Luigi Collina .
Inevitably great swathes of the text are taken up by the incident that will unfortunately define Poll's career- the three yellow cards he gave to Croatia's Josip Simunic , an incident he refers to as his "indelible tattoo". During a chapter done in diary form from his time at the 2006 World Cup in Germany there is a detailed explanation on the incident and it's ramifications for Poll.
Seeing Red isn't the most entertaining book on football, indeed it's not the most entertaining book by a referee( That's "Oh Ref" by Pat Partridge) but it does cast it's writer in a new light which is partly what autobiography's are all about. It answers fairly and squarely all the claims that Poll was more interested in the limelight than in doing the job he was paid to do. Like i said at the start he comes across as an amiable grounded bloke . Which is more than can be said for most players and managers.
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Top Book from a Top Ref
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As parks refs, we all like to imagine what it would be like to control one of the big games. Mr Poll brings it to life - laying bare the emotions as well as revealing simple methods he used in different circumstances.
I expected to be informed: I hoped to be entertained: I didn't expect to be moved. I got all three in spades.
To lose out on a genuine shot at refereeing the World Cup Final due to one massive technical error, after having displayed the quality of English refereeing to the watching world. 'Pollie' doesn't try to hide away, exposing the anguish of that incident and displaying it alongside everything else he achieved in the beautiful game.
Lots of insights and plenty of opinions - well what else would you expect from GP. A cracking read.
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