Derbyshire referee Rob Shoebridge taes charge of QPR for a second time in his fledgling career as the R's travel to Oakwell to face Barnsley on Saturday. The R's won 1-0 at Norwich last time out with this official.

Barnsley v QPR
Referee: Rob Shoebridge (Derbyshire)
Assistants – Brown (East Yorkshire) and Nolan (Lancashire)
Fourth Official – Akers (South Yorkshire)

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I gave our referee at Cardiff on Wednesday night Roger East a six but actually I was quite impressed with him. The mark given to the official at the end of our match reports can be a bit misleading sometimes because I give it as a mark of the team of officials as a whole. So for example on Wednesday Mr East by himself was probably worth an eight but the two linesmen, particularly Mr Pukka Pies 1998 on the nearest touchline to the away end, were probably worth a four so a six it is.


I was slightly concerned to see that we had an inexperienced referee for what was always going to be a difficult match in a hostile atmosphere. Cardiff fans are difficult to referee in front of and on his last visit East had disallowed a Coventry goal controversially and Cardiff won the game with a late penalty. On Wednesday night though he was strong in correctly waving away two penalty appeals from the home side and did well to let the game flow. He made one or two mistakes, Damion Stewart could have been red carded by another referee for his tackle on Paul Parry but actually escaped without even conceding a free kick, but overall I liked what I saw in our first match with Mr East. He has vast experience s a football league linesman and is only now making the step up – he looks like he could do very well.



Another man only recently making the step up after a long time spent running the line is our referee this Saturday at Barnsley Rob Shoebridge although unlike Roger East this is not our first encounter with this referee. Shoebridge, a Derbyshire FA official, was a late replacement for Kevin Wright down at Norwich earlier this season where QPR won 1-0 despite having Matt Connolly sent off for two bookings midway through the first half. It was hard to argue with the sending off but the referee failed to impress overall with a flurry of cards and strange decisions and his mark of three sees him righ down at the bottom of our referee league this season.



Referee: Rob Shoebridge (Derbyshire) 3 Eccentric. The two things he got right were the big decisions on the night – the QPR goal and the Connolly sending off. Rangers can have few arguments with the latter while Norwich have only themselves to blame for the former. Apart from that though he gave some truly perplexing stuff, handed out cards inconsistently, added only three minutes to the second half when QPR could have had few complaints with six or more, corners when they were goal kicks, throw ins the wrong way, bizarre free kick decisions including one where Damien Delaney tripped over his own feet and saw a free kick awarded to Norwich. Ably assisted by two of the worst linesman I’ve ever seen in my life. The three of them were a circus act at times. LFW Norwich Match Report



So far this season Shoebridge has handed out 53 yellows (2.038 a game) and three reds in 26 matches. Apart from his four yellows and a red in our game at Norwich his biggest haul has been six yellows in a game between Swansea and Watford. Overall though these are encouragingly low averages. Ten of those matches have been in the Championship with 21 yellows and a red shown – about level par for him. In two Championship games this season he has shown no cards at all. Leniency seems to be the order of the day because Matt Connolly was actually his first red card in 18 months – he went through the entire 2007/08 season, some 34 games, without showing one and only got the yellow card out 64 times. Encouraging all round really despite his eccentricities at Carrow Road. This is his first ever fixture involving Barnsley.



Elsewhere this weekend good to see Stuart Attwell dropping back down the leagues to learn his trade a bit – he has Exeter v Darlington this weekend. Kevin Friend has Macclesfield v Shrewsbury while Trevor Kettle has Rochdale v Grimsby. Our referee from Wednesday night Mr East is back in League Two with an unattractive fixture between Port Vale and Luton. Chris Foy has the Carling Cup final on Sunday, Gary Scott (another newbie) is our referee for Norwich on Tuesday – more on him on Monday.

Photo: Action Images

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