FOFerview with Fulham Great, Robert Wilson

[Jonaldiniho 88]

Danny, that is the most interesting and I feel genuine interview i have heard. Robert Wilson is an absolute legend in my opinion because of it. Thanks so much for doing it and thanks Robert for doing it.

[bog]

Absolutely scandalous that the game was not replayed. What a pathetically useless referee. Weak FA when we got sweet FA. What a good side that was. As usual we did not get what we deserved.   


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[WhiteJC]

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[dannyboi-ffc]

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[WhiteJC]

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[b+w geezer]

On the Derby match not being replayed, it's tempting to imagine that a bigger and noisier club than ours would have got more satisfaction. And maybe so. But I do wonder. By virtue of results elsewhere, Derby were no longer threatened with relegation. They would have had no motive to be competitive in a re-match and would have had to have been called in from the beach. This is turn would have caused ructions at Leicester, whose place we'd have been threatening to take.

Finger of blame lies less with the League authorities frankly than with Derby County for their stewarding, Derby Police for their policing, the Ref for not taking the players off....and (let's be honest) our good selves for not turning on our heels and simply walking off. This at the very latest by the time Robert Wilson got kicked.

By the time the final fixtures had concluded I think the League was in a nigh impossible position. But none of those other parties had been while the match was in progress.

[Burt]

By virtue of results elsewhere, Derby were no longer threatened with relegation. They would have had no motive to be competitive in a re-match and would have had to have been called in from the beach. This is turn would have caused ructions at Leicester, whose place we'd have been threatening to take.

Being full of righteous indignation, and an argumentative little sod, I wrote to Graham Kelly at the FA to ask exactly how he had arrived at the decision not to require a replay when every prior precedent was on our side. Regardless of reason and time left on the clock, abandoned matches up to that point in time had not been left as abandoned. The reason Kelly gave in his response was as per b+w geezer - you could not recreate the circumstances prior to the match. I didn't agree with him then, and I still don't agree with it now.

[b+w geezer]

On the point of recreating circumstances, I don't see how that could have happened without replaying other relevant fixtures that day. That certainly would have included Derby's relegation rivals' to ensure that they still had a competitive motive. To have Derby placed in peril of relegation again would have served them right in view of their responsibility for crowd chaos.  Maybe that would have been the least unjust verdict. Terribly complicated though.

Nor an outcome that Leicester City would have taken lightly. They'd surely have argued that only the missing minutes, or at most, the minutes following Derby's goal that sparked the incursion, should have been replayed. Understandably. Even justifiably?