Football: firm offers refs free eye exams

Refs should have gone to Specsavers
Thu Jan 6, 2005 04:39 PM ET


LONDON (Reuters) - An referee's lot is rarely a happy one and the latest cheeky offer from a firm of opticians is unlikely to cause a rush of applications for a job as the man in black.
Specsavers' publicity wheeze of offering referees a free eye test is more likely to generate a collective groan among the Premier League's officials rather than a wave of gratitude.

The offer comes two days after television pictures showed a long-range shot by Tottenham Hotspur's Pedro Mendes cross the line by several feet in the last minute of a league game against Manchester United. Neither referee Mark Clattenburg nor linesman Rob Lewis saw the incident clearly and failed to signal the goal and the game ended 0-0.

Their embarrassment was heightened when bookmakers William Hill said they would honour the bets of those punters who had backed Mendes at 20-1 to score the first goal and at any time in the match at 11-2.

Hehe i am not surprised, some of the referee decisions this season so far have been unbelievable. That Mendez goal, was so far in the goal it and you didn't need glasses to see it was. Well maybe the linesman did as he never thought it was...