Adrian Chiles: Why don players see red when they turn the air blue?
Warning: this feature contains strong language from the start. I called Paul Durkin this week. “Sod off,” he said. Warning: this feature contains strong language from the start. I called Paul Durkin this week. “Sod off,” he said. “Sorry? Paul, is that you?” “Just sod off, will you?” “What?” “See, you don’t like it do you? And I would have used stronger language, but I wasn’t sure whether anyone else could be listening.” Point taken. I’d left a message for the former referee explaining that I wanted to find out exactly what kind of language referees will and won’t tolerate. It’s always been unclear to me how it has come to pass that referees are routinely subjected to vile abuse when they have in their own pockets the means to put a stop to it: a yellow card to signal that no more will be tolerated, and a red one to remove the foul-mouthed lout from the field of play forthwith. Before getting into the substance of what Paul Durkin and others have to say, I should point out that the very
