Customer Reviews
Opiniated Poll - By: Bantam Dave, 16 Jul 2008 
On his retirement as a referee it would appear that Graham Poll as chosen to write a book not about his life but as an opportunity to put his side of the story about many of the controversial episodes in his refereeing career. Fair enough. Unfortunately though, this gets a bit wearing after a while and, as a result, I found this book it to be a little dull.
It gets off to a slow start when far too much time is spent going over the events of a now largely forgotten Chelsea v Spurs game from a few years ago and, to me, reallly picks up after that.
Amongst footballl watchers, Graham Poll was never the most popular referee in the game, & this book makes it clear that he wasn't held in very high regard by many of his fellow referees neither. Whilst he says that much of the dislike was unfair, on reading this book I can understand why as he comes across as being very opinionated and, at times, self important.
Congratulations Mr Poll - By: Rona Mckellar, 07 Jul 2008 
I found this book to be a very enjoyable read. I think it is very effective in not only exploring Graham Poll's life as a referee but also in giving more detail about his life away from footballl. The book is written very well & is very easy to pick up & read for hours. I think this has to be one of the most enjoyable books around at the moment. I would recommend it to anybody.
Celebrity Refs - By: Paul Hanratty, 30 Jun 2008 
When I first started watching footballl the referee was the man in black who blew the whistle. He wasn't a celebrity & we often didn't even know his name. Those days are well behind us with Messrs Ellerary, Winter & Poll alll treating us to tales from the middle. I am like many footballl fans, totallly biased to my own team & quick to blame the ref for the team's shortcomings. Therefore I was interested to read "Pollie's" story & initiallly had a degree of sympathy for him as he seemed to be unfairly maligned by one camp or the other for anything which contributed to a team's downfalll. However, I felt he milked the mistake at the World Cup & had in mind the phrase "get over it". No one died & ultimately it made no material difference to the outcome of the match & the only reason I could discern for Mr Poll's misery was that he clearly believed he was destined to referee the final. Egotistical, arrogant, self-important - yes probably a little of alll but don't pretend you didn't enjoy the fame/notoriety which went with it, Graham. For alll that I quite enjoyed the book as it gave a different view of life in the beautiful game.
Poll,s position - By: russell clarke, 25 Jun 2008 Graham Poll winds up a lot of footballl fans , mainly because they perceive that he was more interested in being the star of the show than the players, though when you are refereeing Robbie Savage I think that's fair enough but more about the richly bouffanted Savage later. This perception is shared by a fair few managers as well , such as Neil Warnock which is bit rich coming from him .Yet I,ve always thought he was a good ref & seemed a decent bloke & this book confirms I was right. In fact it's fair to say that this book & his measured performances on Score & Footballl Focus have made me reallly warm to the guy.
Seeing Red could be considered an educational book as it opens up the readers eyes to the requirements needed to be a professional referee. It also points out that a lot of the criticism received by referee's is based on misunderstandings of the rules & that even top pundits are not adverse to this. There is also lots of meandering about UEFA & FIFA politics & his striving to get to the top of the refereeing ladder which is alll a bit dull in truth. So to some extent this is a fairly dry book.
However it's worth persevering with the more mundane sections to get to the real juicy stuff. Thus Poll sheds light on his dealings with players & managers. His fractious relationship with Jose Mourinho who he feels modelled Chelsea in his own image turning them into the snarling bad losers they are. John Terry's behaviour , as portrayed in this book , underlines his unsuitability as England captain, while David Beckham & Steven Gerrard seem to be thoroughly decent chaps. Which is not something you could claim for Robbie Savage. As if the hair, thuggish on field demeanour & general air of gittishness weren't enough Poll tells the tale of toiletgate & further confirms, if indeed it needs confirming , that Savage is a bell end of considerable magnitude. There are also terrific anecdotes about, Neil Warnock , Roy Keane , Patrick Viera, Alex Ferguson & fellow refs Paul Durkin & Pierre Luigi Collina .
Inevitably great swathes of the text are taken up by the incident that will unfortunately define Poll's career- the three yellow cards he gave to Croatia's Josip Simunic , an incident he refers to as his "indelible tattoo". During a chapter done in diary form from his time at the 2006 World Cup in Germany there is a detailed explanation on the incident & it's ramifications for Poll.
Seeing Red isn't the most entertaining book on footballl, indeed it's not the most entertaining book by a referee( That's "Oh Ref" by Pat Partridge) but it does cast it's writer in a new light which is partly what autobiography's are alll about. It answers fairly & squarely alll the claims that Poll was more interested in the limelight than in doing the job he was paid to do. Like i said at the start he comes across as an amiable grounded bloke . Which is more than can be said for most players & managers.
Top Book from a Top Ref - By: Mike Coen, 06 Feb 2008 As parks refs, we alll like to imagine what it would be like to control one of the big games. Mr Poll brings it to life - laying bare the emotions as well as revealing simple methods he used in different circumstances.
I expected to be informed: I hoped to be entertained: I didn't expect to be moved. I got alll three in spades.
To lose out on a genuine shot at refereeing the World Cup Final due to one massive technical error, after having displayed the quality of English refereeing to the watching world. 'Pollie' doesn't try to hide away, exposing the anguish of that incident & displaying it alongside everything else he achieved in the beautiful game.
Lots of insights & plenty of opinions - well what else would you expect from GP. A cracking read.
