Its a fairly obvious topical theme but there were several inexplicable decisions this afternoon that could've easily been corrected if only we had a video ref in football. I really can't see any good reason against it. The entire television audience of France-Ireland had seen Henry's handball several times before Ireland kicked off again on Wednesday night so the argument of 'it would disrupt the game' is nonsense. I think another great benefit is it would show every-one in the stadium what had happened as there would no longer be a reason not to show contentious decisions on a big screen, because the decision would eventually be got right. This would also be good as the man behind me wouldn't bellow in my earhole after every referring error. By the time I left the Vic my ears felt like they'd been to a particularly raucous Sex Pistols concert.
Today a video ref could have ruled that Graham was fouled when he was the last man through and, shortly afterwards, that we should've had a penalty for a handball. These were only the tips of the iceberg of decisions that the ref and his assistants got wrong. They didn't look like they knew half the rules and could've been bad contestants on Faking It. We really do always get shit refs.
Aside from the ref the game had some other things in common with the last one against Preston. Some breathtaking Watford moves involving the entire side, not just Tom and Angela, great goalscoring instincts from H and Danny Graham, super saves from Scott Loach, a near miss by Lloyd and, quietly going about his work with no fuss whatsoever, another superb performance from Lee Hodson.
Scunny were fairly awful and look like relegation candidates. It was good that we didn't let them get a goal which might have galvenised them into an unlikely comeback, but its frustrating that we can be so on top in a game and only score three. That might sound churlish but today's performance was worthy of a 5-0 tonking like the kind West Brom gave to us a few weeks ago. H was unlucky not to have a hat-trick of headers, whilst Nathan Ellington's near misses get closer every week.
On the way home it was shock to hear us included in the list of Championship leaders on 5Live, as our points total now puts us level with QPR and Cardiff in the playoffs. Malky seems to know what his doing. I just hope Scotland don't start to look too closely at how well he is doing in getting this team to punch above their weight.
