English football's list of absurd, egotistical referees is long and ignominious. There's Jeff Winter (he of the deeply disturbing website photo), Mike Dean, Mark 'Clatts' Clattenburg and many, many more.
Chief among them is Graham Poll, who shot to infamy for showing three yellow cards to Croatia's Josip Simunic during a 2006 World Cup game against Australia. He was ultimately sent home from the tournament, and if you had any sympathy for Poll for such an egregious error prepare to see it dissipate.
Mark Schwarzer appeared on 5 Live last night, and told a tale of being dropped by Australia for that game, with Guus Hiddink electing to drop him in favour of Zeljko Kalac.
Remarkably, Poll responded to a pre-game greeting by Schwarzer by goading him over losing his place. Let's allow Mark to take up the story.
My experience with Graham Poll was incredible. I'd been dropped for the game and I'm warming up on the pitch with the third-choice 'keeper while Graham is jogging around the pitch with his assistants.
I said, 'Hey Graham, how you going'. He looked at me and said, 'Been dropped, have we?' and kept jogging.
I felt like the littlest person on the pitch. Then our goalkeeper makes a massive mistake but we get back in the game.
Then Graham Poll made a huge number of mistakes in the game, and I contemplated going up to him after the game to say, 'You know what? At least I'll be back in for the next game, and you'll be on the plane home'. But I didn't, I left it at that.
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