Our final home league game of the season and the EFL have gone to town this week. It’s been a running joke for a few weeks now that I have questioned the common sense of some of the referee appointments, but it’s gone beyond a joke now. On Saturday we have Lee Swabey in charge, who lives in nearby Devon, so its just a mere 440-mile round trip for him to officiate this game. I’m no eco warrior but the EFL seriously needs to reduce its carbon footprint. We are discussing just our game, if this is across the board that’s well over 50 games including the National League that this practice goes on. I may have to investigate this further, to me, it absolutely stinks.
Looking at Mr Swabey then, he is bound to be exhausted after his long trip to SMK, and its not good news for the Dons either with Swabey in charge. He has overseen three Dons games in his career, and we have lost all three. Our paths never crossed last season but, in the season before we lost 2-1 away to Portsmouth and 1-0 at home to Blackpool. The third game was against Ipswich at home during the 2019/20 season which we lost 1-0.
Swabey has overseen 24 games this season, carding just 55 players, which seems a bit low to me. In addition, he has converted one of those yellow cards to a double yellow offence, sent just one player off with a straight red and awarded 5 penalties.
He will be assisted by Garry Maskell and Daniel Flynn on the flags and once again Anthony Da Costa has got the gig to be the 4th Official, that’s his 4th trip to SMK this season, but I’m happy with that as he lives in Cambridgeshire.
Tune in next week where we discuss how much it has cost in fuel to get a referee down from Hartlepool to Plymouth.
