The vast majority of referees would be in favour of recordings being taped and made public, writes LOUISE TAYLOR

DAVID DAVIES and Graham Poll are among those leading calls for the opaque, often vexed, relationship between professional footballers and match officials to be the subject of increased transparency.

The former executive director of the English FA and the former Premier League referee would like the conversations between referees, linesmen and fourth officials, which thanks to earpieces and microphones routinely take place during matches, to be recorded. This is the norm in rugby and American football’s NFL.

Except in occasional instances used for training purposes, similar “taping” does not happen in football but Poll, who officiated at two World Cups, said “referees would be in favour” of recordings being made and publicised. As an FA official Davies campaigned for the introduction of such a measure but met resistance from groups in the game, most notably the Professional Footballers’ Association.

“It is quite beyond me why 90 minutes of conversations aren’t always recorded,” Davies said. “Referees’ conversations should be available to fans who pay their wages, if anything, to be aware of what the referees themselves have to put up with. If the language is so bad, someone has to do something about improving it without sanitising the game. A point has been reached and in this generation you have got to do something about it.”

Such a system would serve as football’s equivalent of the aviation industry’s black box flight recorders and the idea of its implementation was endorsed by the Guardian columnist, The Secret Footballer. “I’m pretty confident that players would think more than twice about swearing at any official if they thought everyone could hear them,” he wrote in a column penned in May 2011. “I know I would.”

As things stand, all four match officials – the referee, his two assistants and the fourth official – wear microphones and earpieces that allow them to hear what each other is saying throughout the match. Accordingly Chelsea’s accusations that Mark Clattenburg subjected Mikel John Obi to “inappropriate language” may well hinge on the evidence of his assistant referees, Michael McDonough and Simon Long, as well as that of Michael Jones, the fourth official.

“A referee’s microphone is on open,” Poll said. “Everything he says is heard by two assistants. So if Mark said something, the assistants would have heard it.”

Were any recordings to be made public, the content would almost certainly be partly comedic and extremely shocking. Although things have improved, with bookings for dissent in healthy decline since the introduction of the FA’s Respect campaign, all things are relative. Cringe-inducing, playground-type jibes abound and the sheer scale of players’ swearing towards match officials would inevitably be highlighted. Meanwhile the referees’ use of the odd expletive themselves – something Poll admits he occasionally resorted to – could provoke consternation.

“There are a couple of referees who swear as much as some of the players,” commented the Secret Footballer. “Telling them to f*** off if they go near them and worse.”

Apart from identifying these culprits, the ability to play back in-game chat would, crucially, clear up claims such as Sunday’s. Poll could certainly have done with football’s answer to the black box being up and running when, in November 2006, he was accused of having told Chelsea players he “wanted to teach them a lesson” during their 2-1 defeat at Tottenham. Chelsea withdrew the allegations but Poll later said the incident contributed to his decision to retire the following year.

Jeff Winter, another former Premier League referee, found it ironic that Clattenburg had been accused of using inappropriate language given the abuse that, despite the Respect campaign, match officials are still frequently exposed to from professionals.

“It’s slightly ironic that players dish it out left, right and centre and then, if – and there is a massive if – something has been said back, and we’re not talking about racial here, we’re talking about like for like – then I don’t think anybody’s got a right to complain,” Winter said.

“We watch football matches every week of the year hearing players use insulting words to referees and then somebody takes umbrage when somebody allegedly says something back.

“I’m not saying referees should do it but there seems to be one law for one set of people and one law for another, but this inference that racial language has been used is very, very serious. I just hope it can be cleared up.”

Mandatory recordings of conversations between match officials and players would not only simplify the FA’s job but open a fascinating, arguably necessary, window into the game’s on-pitch interactions.