10 Ridiculous Refereeing Decisions That Almost Ruined Football

9. Dougie Smith (Rangers vs. Hibernian, 1995)

As I stated in the introduction, no football fans like referees, but Dougie Smith has a particular dislike among the rest for his lack of humour. Paul Gascoigne has always been a player with a cheeky side to him, and when he was still young and fit enough his actions on the pitch would often speak as loud as off the pitch. In a time where Rangers could still look forward to Premier League football, the battered Hibernian 7-0 on their final home game of 1995, and as you can imagine the Hibs fans were not having a particularly enjoyable time. That was until referee Smith dropped a yellow card during the match, and Gazza decided it would be a bit of a laugh to brandish the card at Smith like he had done to many players in the past. It caused a little ripple of laughter for all of the crowd, and was just an innocuous bit of fun - let's face it, Gazza has done a lot worse. But Smith showed that he could use a visit to a couple of comedy clubs when he took Gazza's actions as a clear act of mockery, and proceeded to show the yellow card to the player and actually mean it. This awful coldness to some light-hearted banter demonstrated that certain referees are just asking for the abuse that is thrown at them, and I in no way feel sorry for pointing out that Smith was so dimwitted that he actually goes to his back pocket to get the yellow card, forgetting that he had just been handed the thing by Gascoigne in the first place. The only people that were likely to be happy with this decision were the Hibernian players, who would be glad that the headlines of their thumping would be shared by a true pantomime villain of football.