Pundit Arena Because Sport Is Everything
There were surreal scenes at Wembley on Saturday afternoon as Tottenham and Huddersfield could have faced the prospect of playing without a referee.
Mike Jones, the scheduled referee for the fixture, pulled up in training with an injury. This required fourth official Kevin Friend to step up and take his place (with Jones taking over fourth official duties while sitting down on the sidelines). However, this left officials slightly nervous as they had no backup if, for whatever reason, Friend was not able to complete the match.
Therefore, an announcement over the tannoy went out asking if any qualified referees were in attendance to act as backup in case they were needed to step in.
Wembley tannoy announcement asking for any qualified referees in crowd. Needed on stand-by after Mike Jones pulls calf in warm-up and Kevin Friend steps up from 4th #TOTHUD
— Johnny Phillips (@SkyJohnnyP) March 3, 2018
One of strangest stadium tannoy requests at Wembley: “Would a qualified referee please make themselves known to a steward.” Michael Jones injured his calf in warm-up, replaced by 4th official Kevin Friend. A hobbling Jones belatedly doing 4th official duties from a chair!
— George Caulkin (@CaulkinTheTimes) March 3, 2018
A second announcement went out soon after, confirming that they now had the situation uner control.
Bloke on left has come forward from Wembley crowd offering services as fourth official/ standby referee after Mike Jones injured #TOTHUD pic.twitter.com/9Awmw16JiZ
— Johnny Phillips (@SkyJohnnyP) March 3, 2018
Here’s injured referee Mike Jones forced to act as fourth official from a chair at Wembley. pic.twitter.com/IblDWDRSDN
— Standard Sport (@standardsport) March 3, 2018
That’s certainly a new one for the Premier League. On the pitch, meanwhile, the Tottenham lead 1-0 at the time of writing, Son opening the scoring.
