When Was The Referee's A Bastard

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If I mention that the referee's a bastard, I would no doubt be accused of verbal abuse about the man in the middle, but such a comment would have been valid for the 1878 FA Cup final. The game, between Wanderers and the Royal Engineers and played at the Oval cricket ground, was officiated by Segar Bastard. His 'day job' was a solicitor. He also apparently owned a race-horse.
But I would like to wind the clock back a few more years before that event and continue this article from the 1840s, when the earliest records of club matches were created. It appears that teams at that time would entice a couple of innocent bystanders to 'oversee' the matches, thus ensuring impartiality and reducing the the risk of cheating by either side. These overseers …show more content…

The position of the third umpire was reported as being 'in tribune' which, taking this phrase from its literal meaning of 'raised platform', would probably have meant that he was watching from an elevated position, maybe from a grandstand. Just how he would have communicated with his fellow judges at ground level is anyone's guess.
It took the Eton Field Game version of football to acknowledge of the need for impartiality, when their set of rules published in 1847 included the sentence '‘To prevent dispute it is better to appoint, before the game begins, two umpires, one chosen by each party, and a referee to be agreed on by both parties, whose decision, if the umpires differ, is to be final.' This would appear to indicate that previously-used umpires later became linesmen, whilst the elevated 'third man' came out of the stand to officiate in the middle of the pitch.
Even though the Eton Game rules acknowledged the need or requirement for referees or umpires, when the Football Association pieced together their own set of rules in 1863, they totally left this point out! As the game developed, however, most organised matches did include neutral arbiters as a matter of course until, in 1891, the Laws of the Game were amended to make the inclusion of the use of referees. Confirmation of the umpires' switch to linesmen duties, now began to show in the record

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