Standard of referees remains high, despite recent high profile incidents

Craig Grundy is one of the top Non League referees in Yorkshire

Refereeing is thankless task, most of the time. They rarely get praised and you tend to only hear criticism.
As a website, Sports Performer rarely criticises officials and tries to praise them as much as possible. Gareth Rhodes, Craig Buxton, Craig Hainsworth, Ken Haycock, Craig Grundy, Mick Denton and Brian McGill are just a few referees who have earned heaps of praise in match reports this season.
McGill, a top official from Rochdale, was back at Garforth Town on Saturday for a second time since August and on both visits his performance has been described as “excellent” by senior club officials.
On the whole, refereeing standards in the Evo Stik Division One North and the Premier Division Toolstation NCEL is good. The standard of fitness levels, man management and decision making is particularly high among the majority of officials.
There are still some poor referees out there, but the leagues know who they are. It is a small number I should add. Recent headlines haven’t looked good, but what can you do? You can’t defend the indefensible.
There has been a controversial quickly taken free kick and a player booked for ‘pulling up his sock’ before being wrongly sent off in recent weeks.
What happened on Saturday at Farsley AFC was incredible to say the least. Two teams who are in the top four of their Fair Play League meet and within 20 minutes, three players are yellow carded and one sent off.
Something is not quite right there. All respect towards the referees and arguably the other way had gone out of the window by then and what happened at the final whistle was staggering. The incident was an absolute disgrace and provoked further unnecessary trouble.
It could be argued that it has unfairly given all referees a bad name. However, it should not. One or two poor referees should not tarnish them all with the same brush.