ENGLISH TRIO REFLECT ON SECOND MATCH

Howard Webb provides his final update from South Africa

Our second match in the Confederations Cup 2009 was Iraq’s match with New Zealand played at Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg on Saturday. Iraq needed a win, coupled with South Africa failing to pick up maximum points against Spain on the same evening, in order to progress. The match wasn’t a classic although both teams showed plenty of endeavour. It ended 0-0, which was celebrated in the stadium like a victory for the 25,000 local fans, who were delighted that Iraq failed to win thereby putting South Africa through to the semi-finals. It was also celebrated wildly by New Zealand, who had secured their first ever Confederations Cup point!

The match was a straight forward one for us, with no critical incidents and only two yellow cards shown. FIFA were again happy with how we had performed and in the subsequent instructor’s de-brief, there was only one clip shown from our match - that being a good non-offside decision by Mike Mullarkey.

The following day, on Sunday, we visited Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld Stadium where we saw Brazil comprehensively beat Italy 3-0. The atmosphere within the capacity crowd was excellent, with the much discussed Vuvuzela horns getting a very noisy outing. The sound of these African horns was a little strange at first but you do get used to them and they will live long in the memory, not least because we bought some to bring home for the kids! They are not as easy to blow as you might think, and there is a technique involved in making the famous sound they create.

After these final group stage games at the weekend, we had a day off on Monday when we visited the Lion Park again (it was still as amazing as the first time we went, having a real opportunity to see these amazing animals close-up) and then a return to the Carnivore restaurant in Johannesburg where we again sampled zebra, crocodile and antelope to name but a few exotic meats which were on offer.
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On Tuesday, the announcements were made as to which teams of referees would be staying for the final four games of the tournament. We knew that we would be very unlikely to be staying – we had already banked two solid matches whilst most of the teams of officials had only been involved in one game up to that point. This is a small tournament which means that realistically, two games was the maximum number that any referee team could hope for.

The fact that we had an early group stage game which went well meant that it was almost inevitable that we would receive another group stage game and that was how things turned out. FIFA kept a team of officials from each continent and two teams from UEFA, these being the teams who had officiated in one game. When the announcement was made that we would not be retained, naturally we were a little disappointed not to be staying to the end of the tournament but the goal was always to perform well in two matches, thereby making our chances of returning next year for the World Cup that much better, and we certainly achieved that.

The experiences of being involved in The FIFA Confederations Cup 2009 will live long in our memories, and will make preparation for next year’s World Cup so much easier, should we be lucky enough to be selected. Of course, there is a lot of hard work to do between now and then if we are to realise that dream. But we return from South Africa satisfied that through solid teamwork and a good deal of effort, we gave a sound account of ourselves. We were proud to be able to represent English refereeing.