When a ref's lamenting not lamentable.
In repeatedly lamenting “I’ve got no choice”, Chris Kavanagh sounded almost more distraught than Declan Rice in sending the midfielder off for a second yellow card in Arsenal’s game with Brighton & Hove Albion.
Listening to the on-field audio released last night, the immediate reaction is sympathy for Kavanagh, who is clearly conflicted by the inevitable decision. Rice was already on a booking, having fouled Joel Veltman earlier, and had now kicked the ball away as Veltman was trying to play the ball down the line. It was not a ferocious, dissent-filled booting, but still delaying a restart under the rules.
“You've got to go, Dec,” the reluctant ref tells Rice. “I don't like it. Dec, you need to go, I'm afraid. You've kicked the ball away.” Rice’s captain, Martin Odegaard, is there, attempting some vainful plea-making. Kavanagh laments to Odegaard, “He’s put me in an awful position.”
Leaving aside that Rice put Arsenal in a worse position, down to 10, Kavanagh’s reaction was the highlight of the latest “Match Officials Mic’d Up”, Howard Webb’s deepish dive into a few decisions with Michael Owen on Sky Sports and TNT Sports.
The show is inevitably slightly sanitised and scripted but Webb, the chief refereeing officer of PGMOL, gets his points across, bringing important explanations, and the audio is always fascinating. Not Watergate levels of explosiveness but still revealing.