Terry Blows Lid Off New Campaign

So much for the Football Association's Respect program, introduced this season to encourage referees and team captains to work together. Mark Halsey was shown scant respect this week following his dismissal of John Terry, the Chelsea captain, last Saturday for serious foul play. Not only was Terry's red card rescinded on appeal but Halsey has wound up refereeing tomorrow's League Two fixture between Chester and Shrewsbury.

Normally there would be nothing wrong with a Premier League official occasionally taking a game on the other side of the tracks, but even if Keith Hackett, the referees' boss, did not, as Sir Alex Ferguson claimed, demote Halsey because he refused to change his decision, the authority of all refs has still been seriously undermined.

The Professional Game Match Officials Board, which Hackett heads, insists that he had no part in Terry being let off and able to play for Chelsea against Manchester United tomorrow. But either way the case has raised a number of issues, among them the fact that Chelsea turned up with a Queen's Counsel to argue their case. Some time ago Fifa issued a general warning against football going to law to settle its disputes yet it appears that a referee's decision, far from being final, can now be challenged not just by players and managers but m'learned friends. Before long fans will be chanting "Who's the wanker in the wig?"

With Terry it all boiled down to Halsey's view of what constituted serious foul play as opposed to the so-called professional foul - a misnomer if ever there was one since the offenses are often amateurish in the extreme. At Eastlands last Saturday Jo, Manchester City's Brazilian striker, broke clear just over the halfway line only to be brought down by Terry first sticking out a leg and then grabbing him around the waist.

Halsey gave Terry a straight red card and to a man the old pros on the TV panels declared it a dud call because, with Ricardo Carvalho in a position to intercept Jo, not to mention the distance the City man was from the opposing goal, a clear scoring opportunity had not been prevented. One grizzled sage did harbor the thought that Halsey "might have considered it unsportsmanlike" but otherwise the point was missed by several miles.

Most referees would have merely booked Terry but Halsey's insistence that he was guilty of serious foul play suggested that he was punishing the Chelsea man for the cynicism of the challenge, a decision he was entitled to make. The Brigade of Guards could have been waiting to stop Jo and Terry would still have gone off. As it is the FA's disciplinarians, given an opportunity to stand up for an attempt to retain a shred of decency in the way football is now played, have blown it big time.

True, football has never been a sport for purists. Even one of its founding fathers, Lord Kinnaird no less, pleaded for hacking to be retained when the first laws were formalized. Yet if such a thing as the spirit of the game still exists Terry's foul on Jo offended it. His action in grabbing the Brazilian with an arm recalled Roy McFarland seizing Grzegorz Lato by the shoulders when he began to sprint clear during England's World Cup qualifier against Poland at Wembley in 1973. "There was nothing else he could do," the pundits protested. Yes there was, he needn't have done it.

Serious foul play should not be solely about the sort of tackle Newcastle's Danny Guthrie made on Craig Fagan of Hull City last weekend which left the latter with a broken leg. It should embrace offenses totally alien to the fundamentals of the game. In the early 1950s John Arlott described the reaction of Eddie Baily, a cockney artist in Arthur Rowe's push-and-run Tottenham, to Wolves' Johnny Hancocks being cynically brought down by a Yugoslav during an England game. "Baily dashed across the field in indignant outcry," Arlott wrote. "The offense was not committed against him personally but it was an offense against good football."

Had Halsey's decision stood Terry would now be starting a three-match ban while ruing his challenge on Jo. As it is he has virtually been given license to do the same thing again should the need arise. Why bother about the referee when you can count on a QC?