24 May 2024 , 12:00
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A senior PGMOL referees’ observer has been sacked after receiving a five-month ban for telling a black official he’d have to smile in the dark to be seen.
Rodger Gifford, one of the first-ever referees in the Premier League in 1992, was reported by the disgusted referee of the match who is understood to have told him: “That’s out of order and I will not have that in my dressing room!”
Since his final Premier League season in 1996, Gifford has been an assessor, deciding which referees can progress in the professional and amateur game.
But the PGMOL reviewed his position after the referee and other witnesses to the incident gave evidence against him. The incident took place after the FA Cup second round game between Newport County and Barnet on December 2 last year.
The identities of the refereeing team for the match were redacted from the FA commission’s written reasons for their decision. But the document shows the victim - an assistant referee - was revealed to be the only black person in the room.
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Gifford pleaded not guilty and denied the charges, insisting that had he believed that the words were used or spoken in an aggressive or deliberately insulting way he’d have resigned with immediate effect.
But the Regulatory Commission unanimously found the charge proven and both the FA and the PGMOL have moved swiftly to cut their ties with him.
Referee Rodger Gifford was previously banned for eight games for remarks towards an eastern European official (Photo by Mark Leech/Offside via Getty Images)
Referee Rodger Gilford pleaded not guilty and denied the charges brought against him (Offside via Getty Images)It does, however, throw the spotlight onto the PGMOL’s observer system with many black and brown referees having complained extensively of being racially abused - and denied promotion - by some of the people assessing them.
It is the second time in two years that 76-year-old Gifford has been found guilty by an FA panel for discrimination. In March 2022 he received an eight-game ban for telling an eastern European official who had innocently interrupted a post-match discussion he’d been having: ‘Shut up! You’re not in Bulgaria now!”
At the time, Gifford said when asked for his observations that he is “of a generation that calls a spade a spade”.
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