Shield a huge loss for A-League

Referee Mark Shield's decision to quit the game leaves a gaping hole in Australia's refereeing ranks during a time when confidence in the men in the middle has reached an all-time low.

Shield, Australia's best referee, leaves the game at the peak of his powers, citing increasing family and business commitments, meaning the A-League is left without a referee of genuine international standing.

The 35-year-old has officiated at two World Cups, an Asian Champions League final and most notably, the 2007 Asian Cup final between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. While there is no doubt that travel and time commitments had become too much for Shield, he had also come under increasing scrutiny for his officiating during last year's A-League Grand Final.

In an era where the cameras catch everything, referees are expected to be able to have eyes in the back of their heads. Shield missed the blatant handball which led to the confrontation which saw Danny Vukovic sent off in that Grand Final and endured weeks of bad publicity for it.

On confirming his retirement last week, he described that time as the low-point of his career.

Three weeks ago, Shield missed another blatant handball, this time in the Melbourne v Newcastle match. In a bizarre back-hander to their own referee, FFA's match review panel then decided to suspend the culprit, on this occasion, Adam D'Apuzzo, on video evidence in a decision which sent shock waves around the league.

While the immediate reaction centred around the possibility of a player being suspended for something non-violent, which wasn't punished during the match, the longer-term effects will be more about referees being second guessed.

We will never know the full reasons for Shield's retirement, but it seems significant that he has not officiated in the A-League since that night. The pressure on referees is so much these days that their decisions are not only being reviewed by the clubs and the media, but also by their employers.

But wasn't video technology designed to make the referee and linesman's job easier? Not so if you feel every time you make a borderline decision, you risk being told that it was a mistake. The pressure is now on the referees to act decisively, or be made a fool of by the MRP.

We don't know if that was somewhere in Peter Green's mind when he took the hasty decision to send Michael Theoklitos off for violent conduct on Saturday night. The camera didn't catch what the Melbourne goalkeeper had done to Sasho Petrovski, but it seemed minor and nothing out of the ordinary from what would usually happen at a corner. But could Green risk fobbing it off and later being held to ridicule by an MRP decision to suspend the Victory goalkeeper?

All this video evidence and the crackdown on dissent and treatment of referees has stemmed from last year's farcical situation where Joel Griffiths escaped virtually unpunished from his famous 'love-tap' to a linesman's groin.

In a spirit of 'respect' for match officials, the new review process was brought in to protect referees, but ironically it could end up having the opposite effect.