HOWARD WEBB has lifted the lid on a shocking civil war involving most of the Premier League’s top referees.
While the job of the man in the middle is to keep things calm between two sides on the pitch, when refereeing’s two cliques came together things can get feisty.
In the red corner was Graham Poll’s ‘Red Wine Club’, who got the nickname because they liked to “relax with a tipple (or two) while off-duty”.
In his autobiography, The Man in the Middle, Webb named Paul Durkin, Rob Styles, Mike Dean, Andy D’Urso and Graham Barber as belonging to Poll’s group.
On the other side was Jeff Winter and his pals Mark Halsey, Mike Riley, Neale Barry, Steve Bennett and Barry Knight.
Webb said there was a vague North-South divide with Poll’s group being mainly Southerners and Winter’s tending to come from the North.
He added that group video sessions were a nightmare: “Keith [Hackett] would ask one of us to lead the meeting, giving this nominee carte blanche to hand-pick clips of his choosing.
“Unsurprisingly, this often accounted for some bum-clenchingly awkward moments, since the group’s social chasm meant that personal vendettas would intervene.
“Rob Styles, for example, would replay unflattering clips featuring a rival like Jeff Winter, before gladly dissecting his mishaps and blunders.”
Howard Webb says he was able to get on with both sides but felt closer to Winter’s group and, during the video reviews, some members of the Red Wine Club would go over the top in pointing out his errors.
“‘Come on, Howard,’ they’d sneer. ‘You’ve got to do better than that, for f***’s sake. You’re letting us all down, pal . . .'”
According to Webb, referees were relieved when Hackett, who favoured the group bonding sessions, retired as head of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PMGOL) to be replaced by Mike Riley, who knew what was going on behind the scenes and scrapped them altogether.
The feud between the two cliques came to a head during a team-building weekend at an isolated Lake District cottage.
Webb wrote: “What had been intended as an informal beer ’n’ barbecue night in Cumbria almost descended into a version of Fight Night at the NEC, following a ruckus between Graham Poll and Mark Halsey.”
“These were well-regarded, well-paid Premier League referees acting like badly behaved schoolboys.
“It was big Uriah Rennie who eventually stepped in, shouting ‘Enough!’ as he grabbed Poll and Halsey by the scruffs of their necks before dragging them apart.
At the time Howard Webb had only just been promoted to refereeing Premier League games, and says: “I remember thinking Jesus Christ, what the hell have I let myself in for here?”
Webb was full of praise for current referees' chief Mike Riley, despite describing him as 'not the most sociable person in the world'.
He wrote: "If you ever felt down and needed someone to put your head back on straight, Riley was your man.
"Mike had a knack of putting the spring back into your step, and I’d always emerge from our chats with a more positive mindset."
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