The Middlesbrough boss was baffled as to how referee Thomas Kirk hadn’t handed Boro a penalty at Hillsborough, when Joe Lumley wiped Tommy Conway out while intending to clear the ball. He rang the PGMOL the next day and spoke to former Premier League referee Kevin Friend, who now serves as a referee manager for the organisation, overseeing Championship referees.
Detailing the conversation he had with Friend, Edwards said: “I’ve had a conversation with Kevin Friend on it. It was a really good, open, honest one. He realised it should have been a penalty.
Sad news that Mick McNeil has passed away this week, though you wouldn't know it if you read the Gazette.
Mick was a great footballer and a thoroughly nice and genuine Boro lad.
He was my contemporary and made his debut for us at full back at the age of 18 in 1958. He was so good that even as a Second Division youngster he was picked for England when he was only 20 and playing alongside Bobby Charlton and Bobby Robson gained 9 caps over the next two seasons.
Yet he remained just one of the lads who would turn up every week at the local church disco in Grove Hill with his girlfriend and chat with us all. He didn't have a car. There was no side to him. No edge. No bragging. An intelligent lad, who gave up his career at ICI and remained thoroughly grounded. You couldn't have a bigger contrast with the expectations and behaviour of many of today's players.
He fell out with Boro's worst ever manager, Raich Carter, and went to Ipswich, whom he captained with distinction and led to First Division promotion. The local Ipswich press are expressing heartfelt regret at the loss of one of their legends. Sadly our local press has so far been silent.
He deserves better and I for one will feel the absence of one of our top players from the past and an absolutely wonderful human being.
I too have had a license to referee in my younger days, N, America and I have to say it's my experience Refs although each can have a different view sometimes, unlike fans are not watching the game as a spectator but are working within the laws of the game and id say get it right 95% of the time , sometimes without linesman, you have to watch everything, one of my peeves these days is what is the roll of those running the line these days , I think they could help the man in the middle more, you don't want them interfering as such, but they do sometimes have a closer view of situations.
Bob,
I’m pleased Boro are not playing Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow. I reckon the supporters will be there in droves and the place will be rocking. i am sure the players won’t need any motivation now that the owner is out of the picture
Philip of Huddersfield
when other players make contact with an opponent, either accidentally or not, they lose balance and fall / stumble to the ground.
Conway often falls to the ground with the slightest contact with an opponent mainly because he’s running at speed and the slightest contact makes him lose balance.
But he also dives and is able to fall full length with arms outstretched as he skillfully glides along the ground.
Philip of Huddersfield 👍🤔
If I remember correctly, mick McNeil never lost when playing for England. When playing for Boro as a left back didn’t he also play in many different positions ?
philip of Huddersfield
I looked again at the live coverage of the Conway penalty claim.
After the incident there was no instinctive reaction from the commentary team that this was a stonewall penalty.
Instead there was an extended silence. No one prepared to commit to an opinion. The silence lasted for around 12-15 seconds, an absolute eternity in live broadcasting.
Then Andy Hinchcliffe, as the incident is re-run: "Seems to me as though he actually took Conway out there. Conway seems to me to get there first. Does he? Yes he does!"
By which time Wednesday are attacking and the ref and the ball are at the other end of the pitch.
My own opinion is the same as everyone else's. This was a stonewall penalty, a conclusion reached, like all of the pundits', with absolute certainty after I had seen the replays.
But in real time, I wasn't sure whether the foul had occurred inside or just outside of the area, whether Conway had got to the ball first and whether the ball had gone so far beyond Conway's control as to make the question of it being a foul irrelevant. After the replay I had no doubts.
This is par for the course. The "experts" hardly ever commit themselves to a view in real time. They wait to see the replays. And when they do, they say that what happened is plain to see and fulminate against the incompetence of officials who have to make judgments in real time.
It's really difficult to separate our immediate view of what happened from the hardened conclusion we come to after seeing the re-run. And to keep in the forefront of our minds that the poor old ref doesn't have that privilege
@lenmasterman - I sympathise with that view, Len. In real time I thought it was a penalty. But then again, I support Boro and sometimes you think there is a foul/penalty to Boro when, after a replay, you realise there was not. On this occasion, after the replay, I KNEW it was a penalty. More "stonewall" than most penalties.
But I accept that many pundits want the replay before committing to a view and, as you say, the Referees get no such luxury.
I'd say if most centre forwards were as accurate in their shooting as referees in their decision-making, there's every chance at least half a dozen Premier League clubs would have a 60 goals a season player in their team.
@lenmasterman Re: Mick McNeil
I think it was the local Ipswich newspaper where I picked up the news. This was listed on https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Sport/Football/Championship/Middlesbrough.
Later I saw the sad news on mfc.co.uk. The story was based on the book written by our AV. The one based on legacy numbers. I have the book and compared.
Mick was a player before my time. But he looks like being an exceptional full back and played in several positions at Boro. So a special talent.
He later run a sports shop or shops - depending the source. One in Bury St. Edmunds.
Len, thanks for your memorien on the player. Let him rest in peace.
Up the Boro!
That was a brilliant piece of writing Dormo. Well done.
I do admire those people who can put together a script that is interesting all the way through, but also has different episodes within it. We are blessed with a number of contributors on this blog that can do that time and again.
What is also a little spooky, is that on Thursday we were in Newcastle watching “Miss Saigon” Probably not a good as your post. 🤣
As for “people of Middlesbrough” the majority will have a family line going back to other areas of the country due to the influx of arrivals when the Infant Hercules was born.
My grandmother was Irish, from Dublin, my grandfather was born in Scotland I believe, to parents that were in theatre. The two met and married in Dublin and my father was born there. They came to Middlesbrough in 1914. I do not know of any Welsh connections though.
On the penalty question there is no doubt when you see it from one angle.
I watched via Boro Live and they also showed one of the replays from the referee’s angle; then it was not so clear with a decision having to be made on whether it was in or out of the box and was there contact.
Having seen it from that angle I have some sympathy with the referee. I can’t remember if the linesman was close to the play or not; at the end of the day it wasn’t given so we have to accept the decision. 😎
@k-p-in-spain - You can bet that few Boro supporters would complain if, against Wrexham or another of our opponents, a blatant penalty were to be refused to the other team by the referee! We move on and hopefully upwards.
Many thanks for a superbly scripted entertaining and informative preview FD that has eloquently set the stage for the Wrexham game. I'm pretty much non-stop at the moment and that is likely to continue until the end of November so look forward to watching Boro games as my R&R!
It should be another 3 points as long as Boro don't fluff their lines but I'd like to see the team freshened up in attack as Edwards has quite a few options that are waiting to be honed and settled in - plus 3 games in a week needs fresh legs if niggles and injuries are to be avoided with Boro's high pressing tactics.
OK back to my to-do list before kick-off...
@pedro - Thank you for the blushingly-kind comments, Pedro.
So far as concerns the people of Middlesbrough, you are right that unless descended from the 31 or so (it was a very tiny number) in 1831, and then probably all agricultural workers on farms in the locality, virtually everybody in the town a century later would have been an incomer. It was such a massive population boom to take the town over 150,000 within that period and unless those agricultural workers were uniquely fecund, the people must have come from somewhere. In those pre-welfare days, people would have moved to wherever jobs and the hope of prosperity were to be found.
So Ireland, often a source of migrants to Great Britain especially in the 1800s, and Wales and other parts, sent their huddled masses to play their part in the explosion of industrial activity that grew up on the banks of the Tees.
It must have been an incredible transformation for someone, say born at the time of the first passenger railway service between Darlington and Stockton in 1825. Imagine being born then on one of those farms but, if you lived to 75 and the close of the century, the banks of the Tees and Middlesbrough had already become a throbbing world-leading centre of iron & steel production with furnaces and cokeworks (where there had been only fields), and docks, shops and estates of new houses as new towns sprouted like mushrooms. Someone born at the same time in (then admittedly much smaller than now) Stockton, Yarm, Marton or even Coatham would have been amazed to see an industrial giant sprout up nearby, to dominate in size and population. Not to forget Middlesbrough AFC.
Dormanstown, itself intended as a place near Redcar and Coatham where the workers at Dorman & Long steel works could live, was planned as a "garden city" with green spaces - semi-circular The Green and its surrounding streets aligned to look, in plan, like the sun and its rays as it rose in the morning (and later Bennison Crescent). The first ever custom-built bungalows intended for older people.
The melting-pot that became Teesside melted together not only metals and other chemicals.
But, back to business! Are we confident about BORO v Wrexham? My wife told me there was a Facebook entry about Ryan Reynolds being seen at Teesside Airport yesterday. It might just be someone "having a laugh". But they could hardly use the traditional "seen eating a meal at The Tontine" since it has been closed for some time (though it is being advertised for sale, if anyone is interested, with "price on application" for those who are serious). Maybe Boro will feature in an episode of "Welcome to Wrexham" at the end of the season?
A club, almost extinguished in 1986, which had a period of glory (including actually winning a "proper" Cup and strutting the European stage) in the early 2000s, and whose lion may now be re-awakening. Maybe something for Wrexham to emulate? I do hope those words do not come back to bite me just before 5pm!
Let's get behind the team this afternoon. Amazing things can happen this season if everything goes right. It could be as amazing as the appearance on farmers' fields of an industrial giant in just a few decades. #UTB.
@werdermouth - Cheers! But "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". So set aside some time for your family, you, and for Boro! ATB.
We were actually out at dinner party last night until after 1am so I've got a bit of dull feeling in the middle of my head this morning... Mrs Werder's now at a birthday brunch so I'm off for the Saturday shop after persuading my teenage son that it's in all our interests if he makes it to the shower from his gaming PC 😉
Family life, eh, Werder?
Incidentally I have just checked the oracle known as the internet. I said the population of Middlesbrough in 1831 was 31. Internet AI tells me it was 25 in 1801 and different figures for 1831, one of which was 154. Still hardly a hamlet but certainly not an Elsinore.
Family life, eh, Werder?
Incidentally I have just checked the oracle known as the internet. I said the population of Middlesbrough in 1831 was 31. Internet AI tells me it was 25 in 1801 and different figures for 1831, one of which was 154. Still hardly a hamlet but certainly not an Elsinore.
If I remember correctly the current population of Middlesbrough is around 150,000. All’s well that ends well?
It apparently peaked in the 1960s (when steel was still "a thing" and ICI was marching forwards), declined in the following decades but has been increasing again in the last 20 years or so. 150K is about spot on now, it seems.