Talk:Peter Willis (referee)

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Reputation

The Football League tends to avoid placing referees at games within their local area, and as a result many referees are often placed at games in the next geographically close area. As result, many of the referees at home games for Huddersfield Town, Leeds United, & Bradford City came, at least they did in the 70s & 80s, from County Durham - where Peter Willis hailed from

Willis was a striking figure (and probably still is) - very tall, quite stocky and with distinctive grey hair at back and sides, and a prominent shiny bald head on top. The archetypal bald headed referee.

He was therefore very well known amongst West Yorkshire football supporters during the early 80's - it seemed as though he was refereeing a game most weekends in the area - although this is probably untrue.

He managed to bring together in agreement, the normally deadly rivals of Leeds, Bradford, and Huddersfield supporters, all of whom found him the most controversial referee they had come across, because of the unpredictable nature of his refereeing - and his propensity for disallowing goals and sending players off.

When the news came that he was to ref the 1985 FA Cup Final, it was greeted with some glee by supporters of those clubs - since they knew that it meant that he was retiring, but also because they expected him to go out with a flourish at Wembley with a trademark controversial decision.

We were not disappointed

I'm loathe to speak ill of someone who must be quite an old man now, but I suspect Peter would see my comments as only adding to his reputation for fairness, and would walk away quite proud of the reaction.

His record in League games MUST be checkable - I'd love to see how the stats add up for him - was he that bad ? or did it just seem like that ?

78.32.193.115 (talk) 14:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]