Mark Halsey - Bolton, Lancashire
Mark Halsey enjoyed a fairly meteoric rise to the Premiership League referees list having only taken up the profession in the 1988/89 season after playing 12 years of non-league football. The 48-year-old self-employed driver - or white van man - caught the refereeing bug in the Hertfordshire County League, before joining the football league as a linesman in 1993.

He was promoted to the Premier League list in 1999. Promotion to the FIFA list followed just a year later in 2000 and he refereed his first full international in 2004.

Ref Halsey's reputation suffered a serious blow after disgraceful behaviour in the 2004 Arsenal and 2006 Chelsea games and has to work hard to convince Fulham fans and club staff of his impartiality and ability when he bosses Fulham.

Ref Halsey has "managed" 15 Fulham games in the Premiership and the Cottagers have won 5, lost 7 and drawn 3. He has yellow carded 29 players in the 15 games 17 of them wearing the Fulham shirt. Of the 15 Fulham games he has been involved with 10 were home games with the infamous Arsenal game right in the middle. Between the Arsenal game and the end of last season he gave more cards to Fulham players than visitors in 5 out of 6 home games but in the 4 games prior to the Arsenal game Fulham players got less or the same number of cards as visiting players. Pure coincidence surely.

So far this season Halsey has looked after 4 Premiership games involving Fulham and has issued only one yellow which unfortunately was given to a Fulham player.

Referee Stats -2008/2009
Ref Halsey is behaving total differently to previous seasons and to his referee mates. The average number of yellow cards being issued in Premiership games so far this season is just over 3 Mr Halsey's average is just over 1 or 66% below average! He is also 66% below the Premiership average for red cards. He seems desperate to keep his cards in his pocket which has to be welcolmed.	Mr. Halsey's Av Premiership Ref Total Match Avg Pos Total Match Avg Games 24 19 Fouls 453 18.9 17th 454 23.5 Yellows 33 1.4 18th 63 3.2 Reds 2 0.1 15th 3 0.2 Penalties 4 0.2 9th 3 0.2 Fouls per Yellow - 13.7 18th - 7.2

Homer? (2008-2009) Total Home Away Total Games Fouls Yellow Red Pen Fouls Yellow Red Pen Fouls Yellow Red Pen 24 220 13 0 3 233 20 2 1 453 33 2 4 49% 39% 0% 75% 51% 61% 100% 25% - - - - Premiership Average 19 49% 43% 41% 72% 51% 57% 59% 28% 454 63 3 3

After reaching the heights in the homers yellow card league in previous seasons Ref Halsey had  managed to restrain himself earlier this season. Now however there are only 3 bigger homers than Ref Halsey this season. Will he be a homer or anti Fulham on Saturday?

Previous Fulham games what was reffed by Mark Halsey

2008/2009

12-04-2009 Prem Man City 1-3 Fulham 1y 0r Bookings: Konchesky (Fulham) Good result for Fulham and Ref Halsey behaved reasonably well

24-02-2009 FA Cup Fulham 2-1 Swansea 2y 0r Bookings: Etuhu (Fulham) Bauza (Swansea)

27-01-2009 Prem Sunderland 1-0 Fulham 0y 0r Bookings: None

22-11-2008 Prem Liverpool 0-0 Fulham 0y 0r Bookings: None

26-10-2008 Prem Portsmouth 1- 1 Fulham 0y 0r Bookings: None

2007/2008

05-04-2008 Prem Fulham 1- 3 Sunderland 2y 0r Bookings: Andreasen, McBride (Fulham) For a change the worse thing on the pitch was not Ref Halsey it was the Fulham. We were left 6 points from safety with 5 games to go! As Roy of the Fulham said "The only lifeline is that football is not played on paper - on paper it looks very, very bad for us." The Boys went on to win 4 out of the last 5!!!

01-01-2008 Prem Fulham 1-2 Chelsea 1y 0r Bookings: Stefanovic (Fulham) Roy Hodgson's first game in charge and Halsey actually gave us a penalty.

22-09-2007 Prem Fulham 3-3 Man City 5y 0r Bookings: Bocanegra, Dempsey, Konchesky (Fulham) Hamann, Richards (Man City) Ref Halsey was a disgrace as usual, missed several handballs, Hammann kicking out at Healy following a minor foul and worst of all, how on earth could he leave Richards on the pitch with only a yellow after clearly raising his hands and pushing an opponent. Sure it was nothing but those are the rules as they stand. Halsey also allowed Brazilian Elano to get away with a blatant foul before setting up the goal that Petrov hoped would be the winner

2006/2007

18-02-2007 FA Cup Fulham 0-4 Tottenham 4y 1r Bookings: Diop, Queudrue, Montella(sent off 90) (Fulham) Gardner, Keane (Tottenham) Surprise, surprise, Mark Halsey refused Fulham a penalty, allowed offside goals for the opposition, cautioned Fulham players and let opposition players off in similar situations. Why he is kept on the referee list is a mystery. His presence at Craven Cottage is an insult.

23-09-2006 Premiership Fulham 0-2 Chelsea 3y 0r Bookings: Queudrue, Volz (Fulham) Carvalho (Chelsea) More disputed penalties with surprise, surprise Fulham on the losing side of decisions. Thanks Mark hopefully we won't see you again

2005/2006

07-05-2006 Premiership Fulham 1-0 Middlesbro 1y 0r Bookings: Graham (Middlesbro)

2004/2005

11-09-2004 Premiership Fulham 0-3 Arsenal 4y 0r Bookings: Legwinski, Van der Sar (Fulham) Fabregas, Vieira (Arsenal) The one that included the most infamous refereeing controversy to occur at Craven Cottage in living memory. Andrew Cole was brought down in the penalty area and Ref Halsey blew his whistle and pointed to the spot. After being surrounded by Arsenal players he went through the motions of speaking to the lino and cancelled the penalty. As anyone who was there will remember there was absolute pandemonium. However Ref Halsey stuck to his second decision and later created additional upset by disallowing a goal by Collins John.All this took place before Arsenal had scored and would have put Fulham 2-0 up at half-time. It also led on to the battle with West Brom as Fulham players tried to copy Arsenal.

2003/2004

No visits from Mark Halsey this season

2002/2003

19-01-2003 Premiership Fulham 1-0 Middlesbro 1y 0r Bookings: Southgate (Middlesbro)

04-12-2002 League Cup Wigan 2-1 Fulham 3y 0r Bookings: Djetou , Inamoto , Ouaddou (Fulham)

27-10-2002 Premiership Southampton 4-2 Fulham 3y 0r Bookings: Michael Svensson (Southampton) Boa Morte , Goma (Fulham)

11-09-2002 Premiership Fulham 3-2 Tottenham 1y 0r Bookings: Thatcher (Tottenham) This is the game where the linesman on the Ellerslie Road (remember the time of exile at QPR) side had a shocker allowing two Spurs goals despite offsides and fouls but redeemed himself by insisting on giving a justifiable penalty to Fulham against the initial wishes of Halsey.

2001/2002

01-04-2002 Premiership Fulham 0-1 West Ham 2y 0r Bookings: Finnan (Fulham) Dailly (West Ham)

09-02-2002 Premiership Fulham 2-0 Blackburn 5y 1r Bookings: Malbranque , Marlet , Melville (Fulham) Neill , Tugay, Sent Off: Short (Blackburn)

29-11-2001 League Cup Fulham 1-2 Tottenham 2y 0r Bookings: Bunjevcevic , Ziege (Tottenham)

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