The teenage referee under fire from Terry Christian on Twitter has hit back dismissing the celebrity broadcaster’s claims he was biased.
The M.E.N. revealed yesterday how Christian took to the social networking site to criticise the 17-year-old official.
He blasted the young ref’s performance at his son’s under-11s game ‘clumsy and blatantly and unashamedly biased’ to his 36,000-plus followers.
Christian hit out after his son’s Queensgate Juniors Wasps side were held to a 3-3 draw by Spurley Hey.
He said that the referee was the son of one of the opponent’s coaches and said his decisions ‘defied belief’.
Christian claimed that the ref gave a penalty for handball when it hit one of his son’s team-mates in the midriff, and said one of the youngsters was injured from a foul that was not penalised.
But in a statement the ref, who asked not to be named, said: “I understand that referees take a bit of stick from time to time, but basically I’m a 17-year-old lad who gives up his Saturday mornings to ref under-11s games and I’m gobsmacked by all this fuss.
“Not all my decisions are popular but I always have the interests of fair-play, equality and respect at the heart of every call that I make.
“There’s always a chance that a ref might call it wrong but there are proper channels to go through if people want to make complaints. I’m only 17 but I’ve been a junior ref for three seasons now and I really hope that this will all blow over and I can get on with officiating the sport that I love.”
Christian was told by Queensgate to stay away from training and future matches after his outburst. They also urged him to remove his comments from Twitter, sought advice from the FA and apologised to the ref.
Christian, 52, said he was the victim of a ‘witch hunt’