Ref Review 2012/13: Roger East. A short term solution

By Walter Broeckx

This article is part of the series of the Referee Review 2013. You can find links to earlier articles on the bottom of this article.

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For the next and last ref in our series we have ref Roger East. Roger East, born in 1965 and so he is around 48 years old. And he only came in the PL last season.  Having an age where in most countries they don’t allow refs to continue in the top flights, the PGMOL promotes a ref to the PL. Now I don’t have anything against older refs as long as they can keep up with the game but this surely is some kind of short time solution for the refereeing problems the PGMOL is facing. Problems like too few refs in the PL. Putting an older ref then in to the PL but it means they will have to replace him in a couple of years. I don’t see this as a good way of working.

In the season just gone ref East did 5 games in the PL and we reviewed two of his games. That is 40 % of his games we have been able to cover. So a rather low number of games  and this makes it more difficult to draw conclusions.  I must admit that I considered not doing this ref as only based on two games it is hard to draw conclusions.  But as it would mean that we had a gap in the findings I thought we should do his numbers like we have done with all the other refs. But do keep in mind that when looking at these numbers we cannot look at them as we can look at other refs.

But anyhow,  how did he do when we look at all the decisions?

In the 2 games we could review of ref East we saw that he had to make 243 decisions in total. And we found that 205 of these decisions were correct. That gives him a total score of 84,36% of correct decisions.  Not one of the higher scores. But as said we have to be careful with his numbers.

Of course for those who have been following us for a while,  you know that judging them as correct is not the same as being correct completely. When we can’t judge a call or when we are not 100% sure he made a mistake we call the decision correct. But it might be that if we had seen other angles we might have seen an incorrect decision.  So in general the numbers could be even flattering the refs but this goes for all the refs and not the ref we are looking at today.

On to the important decisions.

As this is based on just two games we only had 120 decisions to cover. And our panel judged that 85 of his decisions were correct. That gives him a total score of 70,83%.  Again one of the lower scores but we must be careful as the sample we had to work with was rather small.

What was good? Well all his goal decisions were correct so that is a great first score that we see.

And what was also good was that he had to make two red card decisions and both were judged correct. I think this is the only ref to have such a 100% score on both goals and red cards. So that is rather positive. But as we have to be careful with negative scores we also have to be careful when it comes to positive scores.

His foul/free kick decisions are a bit too low to my liking. Scores just around the 70% line is a bit on the low side.

His penalty decision score is 50% and that is compared to other refs not that bad. But as you will know by now this is not really a score I like.

Where he could have been better is with the yellow cards. Despite having a 100% score on red cards he somewhat goes missing on the yellow cards. Too bad.

Now let us see if he was biased in the games he did and who favoured and who suffered?

And this is something I don’t like to see. Even when based on only 2 games the bias scores are too far away from the zero score we like to see.

Sunderland and Fulham were the teams suffering from his mistakes. West Bromwich Albion and Swansea where the teams that benefited from his mistakes.

So this gives the impression that he might have been a bit uneven in the 2 games we reviewed.

FINAL CONCLUSION: The final conclusion is that we don’t have a final conclusion on this ref. I am not going to give a conclusion based on two games. Some great numbers (goals and red cards) but also a too high bias difference for the teams he did.  Will he improve or get better? He sure has to be quick to do it as the clock is ticking and he will not get any younger.

This my dear readers was the last ref we have reviewed in the season 2012/13. And now we will carry on and we will have the annual ref of the season competition. Who can be considered being the best ref of the season 2012/13?

The answer will come to you in the next articles. And there might be some surprises in to this.

 

• 1. Who reviewed the games
• 2. What we did and what next
• 3. All the decisions in numbers
• 4. The first, at times astonishing, numbers
• 5. Home and away bias
• 6.  It all evens out in the end – Wigan last season
• 7.  West Ham: Life with a positive bias
• 8.  West Brom and the Referees
• 9.  Tottenham, penalties and some amusing comments
• 10.  Swansea City and a change this year
• 11.  Sunderland, a positive bias
• 12.  Stoke, where refereeing is different.
• 13.  Southampton – how did they ever survive?
• 14.  QPR – a strange case
• 15.  Norwich – more errors than acceptable
• 16.  Newcastle United – again, more errors than there should be.
• 17.  Manchester United: 70% of wrong decisions in their favour. 
• 18.  Manchester City: unlike their neighbours a very small bias.
• 19: Liverpool: you should blame the refs
• 20: Fulham – it all evens out in the end
• 21: Everton: a slight bias in favour
• 22: Chelsea: an occasional bias against
• 23: Aston Villa: a huge bias in favour
• 24: Refs give opposition freedom to kick Arsenal off the park.
• 25. The complete league bias table
• 26. Untold has said it for a long while, others follow
• 27. Andre Marriner; a good ref but 10% of his goal decisions are wrong!
• 28: Anthony Taylor: Disastrous when it comes to penalties
• 29.  Chris Foy: Very bad on cards and fouls
• 30.  Howard Webb, an amazing score
• 31: Jonathon Moss: Over 90% right.
• 32: Lee Mason, the ref with penalty area fever
• 33: Kevin Friend: the red card disaster
• 34: Lee Probert: This is not acceptable
• 35: Mark Clattenburg: good on red, poor on yellow
• 36: Mark Halsey: under half his penalty decisions were correct
• 37: Martin Atkinson.  This is not a Fifa ref
• 38: Michael Jones: Poor discipline
• 39: Michael Oliver: This doesn’t look too clever
• 40: Mike Dean – an unacceptable bias.
• 41: Neil Swarbrick.  Every goal right but oh the bias
• 42: Phil Dowd: After a good year, a year in decline