What are the facts?

Decisions made by referees have been questioned more frequently in recent times, and have been brought to the South African Football Association’s attention through the media spotlight.

The FA is aware of the problems that they are facing. Last week SAFA’s head of referees, Tenda Masikhwa, acknowledged that some decisions have been questionable and that referees are expected to improve their game.

“We acknowledge that teams invest a lot of resources in running their business. We have seen some borderline game-changing decisions in some matches, for example, the Bloemfontein Celtic/Mamelodi Sundowns, Cape Town City/Bidvest Wits and a few others just to mention a few.

“While match officials are only human and are prone to making mistakes, some of the blunders are unacceptable and we ask match officials as professionals, to jerk up their act,” Masikhwa said on the FA’s official website, on October 9.

Three days later, on October 12, the first casualty of the recent officiating errors was identified. SAFA’s intentions were made clear as Masikhwa revealed on the FA’s website, “Following a wrong offside call by Assistant Referee (Edward) Madidilani, which had a direct impact on the outcome of the match, SAFA has endorsed the recommendation of the Review Committee which is to push Madidilani down to officiate in the SAB League for the next 8 weeks.

“The Mamelodi Sundowns goal was wrongly disallowed for offside and we had to take action against such flagrant failure to correctly apply Law 11,” said Masikhwa on the goal that was disallowed in Downs’ league game against Bloemfontein Celtic.