BOUTsy Investigates... Referees

Welcome to what should be a regular feature - BOUTsy Investigates...

In this feature, we use some of the £10m we get from AFCB (for the poaching (we call it saving) of young players from the Scumpton Academy, but that's another story) and send BOUTs off on a no-expense-spared mission to see if science can answer some of football's greatest conundrums...

IN THIS FEATURE: Why Do We Always Get Crap Referees?

For this feature, we asked BOUTsy to go and ask some Uni boffs to use science and see if they can find out scientifically and irrefutably the answer to the age-old question: Why do AFCB consistently and continually seem to get crap referees?

We decided the best way to do this was to ask a variety of people to investigate, then get a single person to collate and analyze the findings and present us with the answer.  Myself and s4b held a meeting, and both agreed to get paid studies done by 9 different universities, and then to pay a tenth university to interpret the results and draw a conclusion.

Armed with £500k, we grabbed a copy of the UCAS book and set about finding every university that had either a sports science department, any sort of specialist football department, a department in any of the social sciences, or any kind of psychology department and inputting them into a database.  We then got that database to spit out our 9 research universities and our all-important tenth uni that would hopefully give us our answer.

The Uni's were (in the order in which they were spat out):

1. The University Of East Anglia, Norwich
2. The University Of Wolverhampton
3. Aston University, Birmingham
4. Kensington & Chelsea College
5. University Of Hertfordshire, Watford
6. University Of Central Lancashire, Burnley
7. College Of Haringey, Enfield & North East London
8. University Of Liverpool
9. University Of Manchester
10. University Of Sussex, Brighton

We contacted the first 9 Uni's, asked them to help us, got told flatly to "bugger off" so we contacted them again using a more formal tone (and £50,000 in used £20 notes) and got told they'd be more than happy to help.  14 days later we gave BOUTsy £50,000, bought him a return train ticket to Brighton (we had to buy his ticket for him as last time we put him on a train he ended up lost for 4 days trying to get a ticket back to Boutsmouth.  Luckily someone finally recognised the AFCB crest on his hat and sent him back, otherwise he'd still be lost now) and sent him off to meet Professor Llugaes Yag of The University Of Sussex to hopefully get our answer.

That was 5 days ago.  We haven't heard from BOUTsy since.  We did hear from Professor Yag yesterday via email, though.  I can only copy part of the email here as a lot of it is unprintable and contains swear words even I haven't heard of.  Apparently BOUTsy turned up yesterday pissed and singing football songs, including derogatory ones about Brighton, handed Prof. Yag £45,000 and started singing, "sh*t refs, we only get sh*t refs...". Here's our email:

"Dear UTCIAD.co.uk,

  I was delighted to meet your colleague "BOUTs" today who immediately after introducing himself burped loudly and then told me that wearing socks with my sandals made me look like a homosexual.

**content removed due to excessive insults and swearing**

So yes I have your f***ing results.  It's because you're all blind.  It's no surprise really since all your supporters are in their eighties.  People in Bournemouth are so old and so blind that even your shop windows are bi-focal.  You shout "hand-ball!" when it strikes someone's f***ing shoulder.  You scream for a penalty when a gust of wind blows your forward over.  You whinge when a career-ending tackle gets your player a yellow instead of a deserved red card.  Referees have an incredibly tough time, and the quality of referees that you get are some of the best in the world.

I hope this answers your question.

Prof. L. Yag, University Of Sussex

And BHAFC ST Holder"

So there you go... There's your answer.

PS if anyone sees BOUTs, please pop him on a train back to us