World Cup Blog | Max Brockbank Poll Position Is One Yellow Too Many subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story Max Brockbank: Read all his blog entries

Posted Friday, June 23, 2006: 11.59BST

DIETHER ENDLICHER / AP CHEERS MATE >>>> Australia's team captain Mark Viduka, back to camera, hugs referee Graham Poll

A tip for all pub-quiz officionados in the coming months — look out for this question: Which player was booked three times in a World Cup soccer match? Fans of the Socceroos might also be asking a subsidiary: Who told told Graham Poll he knew how to referee a match?

I must admit my English breast had earlier swelled with pride when I heard that it was Brit Poll who has holding the reigns of the vital Croatia v Croatia (sorry, Australia — it's an easy mistake to make) clash in Stuttgart's Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion last night. Someone said to me that they thought it unfair that an Englishman was wearing the blue shirt, considering Australia's ties with the Motherland and all that, but I knew better: the British sense of fair-play and strict attention to detail would shine through. Our man would show the rest of the world's referees how to do it right.

Fat chance. If there was any hint of bias towards the men in Gold and Green it wasn't showing: exactly the opposite in fact, especially the two penalties that never materialised. There was a sense that perhaps Poll had tried to even things up when he allowed Harry Kewell's offside goal which leveled the scores and sealed qualification to the Round of 16 for the Aussies, but that thought had to abandoned in the light of one of the most bizarre examples of umpirical incompetence ever displayed this World Cup.

Dario Simic had been booked for a foul late in the first half, so when the yellow card came out for the second time — at a vital spell of play with the Croatia under pressure — we all gasped when it wasn't followed by the red. And the Croatian defender played on (can you blame him?) as the match got more and more bizarre, with some real end-to-end magic and fireworks.

Note must be made of the goalkeepers' contrasting performance ranging from Stipe Pletikosa's terrier-like grip which held the ball like glue on the Croatian goal line — even as teammates and opponents alike crashed in a heap on top of him — to the incredible fumble which saw the ball bounce out of Socceroo Zeljko Kalac's less-than-sticky mitts and into the back of the Australian net.

On and on the battle went into stoppage time, with Australia clinging on to that vital drawn scoreline. And then — as the seconds ticked away — Poll flashed his yellow at Simic a third time (this time for dissent) followed by the red! Simic was off, albeit with all the rest of the team on their way back to the showers and later the hotel to start packing.

By the way: don't go looking for any of this in the official record. It's simply not there. Even FIFA it seems wants to pretend in never happened.

As the whistle blew the field was in disarray. The Croatians — who lead twice in the course of the game — couldn't believe they were going home empty handed and were either sitting in stunned silence or sobbing quietly (especially, it seems, one alluringly-clad supermodel-type the German TV cameras kept going back to); the Socceroos' supporters were ecstatic — though probably wondering how they were going to explain to the boss back in London how they're were going to be able to do that late shift behind the snug bar on Saturday — and the rest of us were dazed and confused over the spectacle of refereeing par excellence we had just witnessed.

And because of that perhaps us Brits might be a little less eager in future to tell the rest of the world how when we do things, we do them properly ... unless of course you mean a proper stuff up.

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