When Push Comes To Shove

Did you see the referee, Mark Clattenburg, push that Birmingham City player yesterday?

There was some rubbing of foreheads and squaring up going on between the City player and an Aston Villa player and the ref just ran over and gave the City bloke a hard push away backwards.

I was pretty surprised when I saw it. Not least because had he stumbled the bloke could have had a really hard fall.

It is of course technically Common Assault.

Mr Clattenburg may of course argue that he was acting to protect the safety of others, which might offer a lawful justification.

One possibility is that he took a pragmatic (although not very PC) view of the situation and assessed that a bit of bog standard, common sense manhandling would be the appropriate course of action.

I might even have been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, had I not found out one or two other things about him.

Derbies are clearly not an area of strength for him.

And he certainly seems a bit 'trigger happy' with the yellow and red cards.

Maybe the clue is in that last one. Perhaps referees are only given a limited number of cards per season and he has been so gratuitous with his, he has used them all up.

So now, instead of issuing cards he is resorting to summary justice.

I can't wait until the start of the bare bottom spankings.