For the second time this season QPR have veteran referee Colin Webster in charge of a northern away game although the R's would hope for a better result than they managed at Burnley in his last match.

Doncaster Rovers v QPR
Referee: Colin Webster (Tyne and Wear)
Assistants – Clark (Northumberland) and Harwood (Manchester)
Fourth Official – Salt (North Yorkshire)

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There were a couple of examples over the weekend of referees creating problems for themselves. Firstly at Everton v Boro in the FA Cup where I thought on the whole Mark Halsey had an excellent match in testing conditions – what do you do when you have 6ft 6in German competing with a 6 ft 7in Belgian with a giant afro? In the end he got it all about right.



However one incident where his admirable wish to play the advantage whenever possible almost got him into trouble. Fellaini, Cahill, Huth and Pogatetz got involved in a scrum over a loose ball and the first Everton man was fouled, rather than give the free kick though Halsey allowed Cahill to bring the ball out and as it turned out straight into another scramble. So suddenly we had the best part of eight players involved in two opportunities to kick lumps out of each other. Everton did then get their free kick and play quickly restarted but by allowing one kick fest to quickly develop into a second Halsey risked a brawl.

Still, I much prefer his style of refereeing to anybody else’s and his control of the game apart from that was excellent – you really notice how refreshing it is when advantage is played regularly when you watch a game controlled by him.



The second incident came in the La Liga game later on Sunday between Getafe and Malaga. A dull and fairly run of the mill game turned into a complete farce on the half hour when the referee refused to allow a Getafe player back onto the field after treatment. Players from both sides seemed unsure what to do and while this was going on two of them decided to kick out at each other off the ball. This resulted in yellow cards, which in turn resulted in protests, which resulted in more yellow cards which resulted in play acting to try and get more yellow cards. A problem entirely of the referee’s making. Although as ever the constant play acting, rolling around and referee surrounding does make La Liga difficult to watch for me.



Our referee at Doncaster on Tuesday night is Colin Webster who was in charge of our disappointing FA Cup replay defeat at Burnley in January. Hi rating of six was good enough for joint fourteenth place on the referee league.



Referee: Colin Webster (Tyne & Wear) 6 It takes a special kind of man to still be pedantic enough to insist that a free kick is taken from exactly the right place, and even have a crucial one on half way retaken twice, after 110 minutes of football but Mr Webster is that man. He wasn’t too bad really in fairness, hard to argue with any of the four cards and the main complaints from both sides seemed to be more around the assistant referees who can at best be described as eccentric. LFW Burnley Match Report



So far this season, probably his last in the Football League, he has booked 58 (1.87 a match) and sent three off in 31 matches. At the weekend he booked five and awarded a penalty in what is always a keenly contested derby match between Grimsby and Lincoln at Blundell Park. The home side won 5-1. No repeat of that on Tuesday night please!



You have to look back to the 2005/06 season for the QPR game Webster refereed prior to the Burnley match. He refereed our 2-1 win at Leicester City when Paul Furlong bagged a late winner after Alan Maybury had been sent off for the hosts. Furlong was later sent off for Rangers and in all Webster showed eight yellows and two reds that day. His mark of four saw him finish 25th in the referee league that season.

Ref: Colin Webster (Tyne & Wear) 4 Got all caught up in the controversy. Rightly sent Maybury off for a bad tackle but then set about trying to keep everybody happy. A dodgy decision to Leicester was met with howls of derision from QPR so he promptly awarded the next fifty fifty call against Leicester. Instead of just judging everything on its merits he was constantly trying to rectify an earlier poor decision and the result was disorganised chaos for long periods. The strangest decision came when Danny Shittu hammered the ball into the face of an opponent and received a free kick. LFW Leicester Match Report



He has only refereed QPR away games in his time, including the 6-1 demolition at Leeds and wins at Chesterfield and Bury as well as a draw at Northampton. Overall in QPR games the R’s have won three, drawn one and lost one which is not bad at all considering how we normally do away from home. In that time QPR have had eight booked and two sent off, Furlong and Danny Shittu at Chesterfield, while our opponents have been given seven yellows and one red. The majority of those cards did come in the Leicester match.



Despite the card haul at The Walkers Stadium Webster tends to be a pretty reasonable official from what I have seen of him – not often prone to flashing the cards. His career is starting to wind down now so he has the benefit of many years of experience and that often shows with good dollops of common sense in his performances.



Elsewhere this midweek Trevor Kettle has Norwich v Cardiff, Kevin Friend has Southampton v Derby and bizarrely Howard Webb has Chesterfield v Grimsby at Saltergate.

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