First the table!
Referees with less than 3 matches have been excluded
An amazing 53% of the red cards awarded was given out by 4 of the 11 referees across only 23% of the matches played! The worst offender being Sukhbir Singh, who gave out 12 cards in 15 matches. In almost (Remember! 6,000 odds fans in the 8,000 capacity Jalan Besar Stadium is almost a full house!) every match Sukhbir officiated, a player would be sent off.
Then there is G. Letchman, who officiated 3 matches and had a perfect record of sending a man off in every match.
The winner of the S.League 2014 referee of the year, Muhd Taqi too is a card happy referee, being one of the trio who flashed their yellow cards at least 5 times per match. The other two being G. Letchman and Sukhbir Singh, who together averaged 1.9 more yellow cards per match, when compared to referees from the top leagues, and 1.6 cards more than the league average. Here at the Ass League, we wonder how Sukhbir Singh and Muhd Taqi got nominated for the award in the first place!
With a red card ratio of 0.314, 1 player would be sent off in every 3 games! As compared to the 0.178 ratio of top European leagues, which indicates 1 player being sent off every 5 games. Even the English Premier League, which is known Worldwide as one of the most physical football league, has less cards being awarded by the referees. So is the S.League more fitting of being labelled the most physical league in the World? Or are our referees just card happy?
With the ridiculous sanction being imposed on the clubs to age restrict their players, maybe the league should impose a similar and equally ridiculous restriction on the numbers of cards our referees can give. After all, the amount of cards given by our referees are lopsided!
