SPORT NOTEBOOK
Football League set for first
black referee since Rennie
The Football League is set to make
its first appointment of a black
referee since Uriah Rennie was
promoted from non-League more
than 25 years ago.
Sam Allison, a 39-year-old former
non-League footballer who has been
refereeing in the National League,
has been shortlisted for promotion to
the EFL to take charge of League
One and League Two matches.
Allison, from Wiltshire, also works
as a firefighter, and the
appointments will be confirmed
in the middle of August.
The lack of black, Asian and
minority ethnic (BAME) referees
in English
professional
football is little
short of a disgrace.
Rennie, who was
appointed in 1994,
was the last black
referee to officiate in the
higher reaches of the game
until he retired in 2009.Martin Cassidy, chief executive of
the charity Ref Support UK, said:
“It is great that Sam is getting an
opportunity. He’s a great lad, with
excellent refereeing skills and a
great level of fitness.”
The last BAME referee in English
football was Jarnail Singh, a Sikh
who took charge of EFL matches
between 2004 and 2010. His sons
Sunny and Bhupinder Gill are
climbing the refereeing ladder.
Sunny, 36, a prison officer, has
reached the level where he can
referee National League games,
while Bhupinder, 35, is an
assistant referee in Leagues
One and Two.
Mike Riley,
general manager of
Professional Game
Match Officials Ltd,
admits that the lack
of representation
among officials needs
to be addressed, saying:
“We need to take
diversity really seriously
and create opportunities
for everyone.”City nominations
One intriguing item in the full Court
of Arbitration for Sport decision to
overturn Manchester City’s European
ban was that the club did not only
nominate Andrew McDougall, QC,
as one of the three arbitrators, of
which Uefa also chose one, but they
also suggested Portugal’s Rui Botica
Santos as the panel’s chairman.
Uefa raised no objection.
Der Spiegel, the German magazine
which published the leaked emails
that led to the Uefa action, has
published more emails that would
have supported Uefa’s case had they
been made available. Der Spiegel has
confirmed it was approached by
Uefa’s legal team during the case, but
pointed it in the direction of Rui
Pinto, the Portuguese hacker who
originally acquired the emails. Uefa,
however, did not contact his lawyer.Staveley counts
cost of collapse
It is no wonder Amanda Staveley
was in tears after the collapse of
the Newcastle United takeover —
her company was to be a 10 per
cent shareholder and so is liable for
10 per cent of the £17 million non-
returnable deposit paid to Mike
Ashley, the club’s owner.
At the very least Staveley, whose
unrelated court case against Barclays
is due to be decided in October,
could lose out on £850,000 as half of
the deposit should be returned
because the Premier League had
refused to sign off the deal.Martyn Ziegler
Chief Sports Reporter
Sport
8 2GS Saturday August 1 2020 | the times
Dame steps down
Neither the Commonwealth Games
Federation (CGF) nor the
Birmingham 2022 organising
committee carried the
announcement on their websites
that Dame Louise Martin, the CGF
president, had stepped down from
the 2022 board after criticism about
lack of diversity among the directors.
There was no official press release
either, with the news emerging on
the BBC. David Grevemberg, the
CGF chief executive, tried to justify
the lack of publicity around it by
saying: “We really wanted to be
judged more on our action than
on our talk.”
Martin will be replaced by Sandra
Osborne from Barbados on the
Birmingham 2022 board, which had
only one BAME representative
among the 20 directors.Lions’ bumper shirt sponsorship deal
The British & Irish Lions’ shirt-
sponsorship deal with Vodafone for
next year’s South Africa rugby tour,
which was announced this week, is
worth £6.25 million, an impressive
sum given the economic climate
at present.It is also the same annual amount
that the Six Nations had to settle for
when Guinness became the main
sponsors of the tournament in a
six-year deal starting in 2019, having
initially set the price at £17 million
a year.Allison hopes his promotion
will be confirmed this monthStaveley could lose at least £850k