Supervisor to Superstar

Security staff ensure game safely goes ahead

The saviour on Saturday was John Campbell, the G4S supervisor at the game. He answered the call for a replacement match official after match referee Kevin Clancy was forced to retire at half time in Dunfermline`s home game against Cowdenbeath. Speaking after the match he said:-

"I was just asked to come in and help them out so I did it. I have come forward two or three times before but this is the first time that I have been used.

"I am a category six referee in amateur and welfare football in the Kirkcaldy and District league and I come from Rosyth."

The 61 year old was well known to several of the Dunfermline supporters sitting in the North Stand and did receive a fair amount of banter but Jock concluded "they were alright!"

Pars Manager Jim Jefferies paid credit to the second half officials and the volunteer replacements:-

"We had one who was a registered official and we got word that we couldn`t really cancel the game; if we did we might have faced the SFA`s wrath for not completing the game when we were told to go on by the supervisor. He said that it was `your decision` if we decided not to play.

"The only thing open to us was to play it.  At the end of the day we got a registered man but it caused a lot of confusion because he was not allowed to give offside, he wasn`t allowed to give any free kicks - just the straight forward is the ball in or out. I felt that sometimes the referee had to hang about in that half and left the other half to the proper linesman.

"The referee informed us at half time that he would need to spend most of his time in this half due to that fact but then he might have to do that anyway since it was all Dunfermline" joked Jefferies. "There were a couple of decisions where the linesman couldn`t give it."