Well, let’s hope this goes better than last time - Referee Tuesday, 14th Oct 2025 12:02 by Clive Whittingham Durham’s Adam Herczeg will be our referee for Millwall at home on Saturday – he was last in charge at Coventry away. Referee >>> Adam Herczeg (Durham), third season on the Championship list, last in charge of QPR for a 7-1 defeat at Coventry (not that it had much to do with him) Assistants >>> Akil Howson (Leicestershire) and Nigel Lugg (Surrey) Fourth Official >>> Steve Martin (Beverley Hills), co-wrote and starred in the 1986 comedy western movie Three Amigos, directed by John Landis. HistoryCoventry 7 QPR 1, Saturday August 23, 2025, Championship Coventry Rushworth N/A, Van Ewijk 7, Thomas 7, Kitching 6, Da Silva 6 (Brau 6), Torp 8, Grimes 8 (Allen 79, -), Mason- Clark 7 (Rodrigues 6), Rudoni 8, Thomas- Asante 8 (Kesler- Hayden 6), Wright 8 (Simms N/A) Subs not used: Andrews, Bidwell, Obikwu, Wilson Goals: All together now: Wright 12 (assisted Van Ewijk), 37 (Assisted Thomas- Asante), Thomas- Asante 23 (assisted Rudoni), Rudoni 35 (assisted Grimes), 43 (assisted Thomas- Asante), Torp 47 (assisted Mason- Clark), 66 (assisted Rodrigues) Yellow Cards: Kitching 90 (foul) QPR: Walsh 1; Dunne 1 (Mbengue 3), Morrison 2, Cook 1, Esquerdinha 1 (Kone 4); Varane 2 (Adamson 2), Field 2, Morgan 1 (Madsen 2); Dembele 1, Kolli 2 (Smyth 3), Burrell 2 Subs not used: Akindelini, Bennie, Nardi, Vale Goal: Kone 90+1 (assisted Morrison) Yellow Cards: Dunne 28 (foul) Referee: Adam Herczeg (Durham) 6 No contest to referee. West Brom 1 QPR 0, Saturday March 8, 2025, Championship It was decided by two key incidents in the first half, both involving rookie Championship referee Adam Herczeg who had control of this match like Phil Mitchell has control of his liver function. The first, five before half time, saw a penalty awarded to the home side for Jack Colback pulling Jason Molumby away from his attempt to attack a Tom Fellows cutback at the near post. Steve Cook screamed at the official and was booked for dissent but Colback had no real need to grab Molumby in the way he did and could have few complaints at the decision. The real ire should really have been directed at Kenneth Paal, whose attempts to prevent Fellows breezing past him and delivering the ball in the first place were pathetic. If you’re looking for a penalty taker to reprieve you from a disaster of your own making then Adam Armstrong isn’t really him. Sure enough the Southampton loanee buried the kick with nonchalant ease. The narrative at that stage was you’d be more likely to see one of Elon Musk’s toy spaceships return to earth safely without exploding into a giant fireball than you would Herczeg award the same penalty at the other end to QPR in the same circumstances. Surprise all round then when, three minutes into first half stoppage time, the official reached for the back pocket rather than the top one and red carded our former darling Darnell Furlong for belting Koki Saito in the side of the head. Moany Towbray is adamant this was little more than a misunderstood shoulder barge with unintended, accidental consequences and says his club will appeal the suspension. I’m interested to hear how that goes because there’s no really good angle of it on replay and the fourth official is bound to have had an input on the decision from five feet to Mowbray’s right. We can though, of course, vouch for Furlong’s impeccable character – he was absolutely staggered by the decision. This game was already turning into a tax return level of testicle ache even before the home side entered into a game of chicken with referee Herczeg. It was a game they won even more comprehensively than the match itself. The theory went something like this… If this rookie Championship referee has already controversially sent off one of our players, he is vanishingly unlikely to send another off. And he’s certainly not going to take the step of reducing us to nine men for something as trivial as a bit of time wasting. So… let’s time waste. Let’s see. Let’s put that to the test. How much will he bear? How long will he let us do this before his patience snaps? Mason Holgate, on at half time and immediately booked for booting the ball away, repeated that dose twice more. Standing by his own corner flag with the ball in his hands for a throw in, he dropped it and kicked it ten yards up the touchline so he had to walk and fetch it and bring it back. Joe Wildsmith stood with the ball in his hands for 20 seconds and nothing happened. So next time he stood with it in his hands for 25 seconds and nothing happened. So next time he stood with it in his hands for 30 seconds and nothing happened. Even with the away end counting it down out loud for the officials they remained unmoved. Herczeg made it so blatantly obvious that he had no interest in getting involved in this that he frequently stood with his back to Wildsmith altogether, allowing the goalkeeper to journey far and wide looking for a spare ball to replace the perfectly good one already waiting for his goal kick in the six-yard box. Referee refused to even look at him doing it, less it become to flagrantly obvious that he’d have to borrow a pair of bollocks from a real grown man and do something about it. Talk to actual referees about this and they tell you two things - the time gets added on anyway, and the punishments for holding the ball too long or picking passbacks up are disproportionately harsh and really difficult to administer and set up for so they don't both giving them unless it's absolutely blatant. Firstly, bollocks - eight minutes was a joke. And secondly, sorry, but what the fuck? You can't just pick and choose which rules you're applying and which you're not - oh, I don't really like that one, because it's a bit harsh. This nonsense is why, for the first three weeks of next season, a corner will be awarded if the goalkeeper holds the ball for more than eight seconds. An absolute carte blanche for every goalkeeper to pretend he's injured every time he catches the fucking ball. It quickly became utterly farcical until, quarter of an hour from the end, Wildsmith decided he was missing a stud from his boot, and refused to continue with the game until it was replaced. The referee had laid the groundwork for this situation and brought it upon himself. What if the goalkeeper just refuses to play? Then what? I don’t know, there are studs missing from my football boots all the time. I can play for weeks without noticing. Since when has a missing stud on a football boot been a reason to stop a Championship game for six minutes? I’m sure this happens a dozen times a season – somebody runs round from the bench with a new boot and it gets changed on the run while play is at the other end. And yet, the referee was happy to play along with this absolute pantomime, standing there gormlessly colluding in the illusion that this would absolutely, definitely have been happening exactly like this if West Brom were 1-0 down. Encouraged, Wildsmith decided to got completely undressed, cast his kit aside, laid in the goalmouth in his underwear. I mean why not? Really try it on. I would. Then he did his shoes up like your three-year-old does his shoes up. Then he replaced his gloves like somebody who’d never seen Velcro before. There hasn’t been an affair as long and drawn out as this since Carol’s narcissistic sports pimp tried to peel off a National Express coach in his Renault Megane. Wildsmith was daring the referee. Challenging the officials. I’m not restarting the game. I refuse. What are you going to do about it? Answer… I’m going to point at my watch and then show you a yellow card just before the full time whistle – just the 14 left to go for him to get a suspension this season, I’m sure he’s devastated. Kyle Bartley stood and laughed, goading the away end, next to the referee while it all went on. The West Brom referee committee so well established it had it's own HR, payroll and union. They knew. They all knew. You could operate this guy from behind, as your puppet. West Brom: Wildsmith 6; Furlong 5, Bartley 8, Heggem 7, Styles 6; Molumby 7, Mowatt 6; Fellows 7 (Holgate 46, 6), Price 7 (Diakite 90+4, -), Johnston 5 (Ahearne-Grant 62, 6); Armstrong 6 (Dike 78, 6) Subs not used: Bany, Diangana, Griffiths, Lankshear, Swift Goals: Armstrong 40 (penalty, won Molumby) Red Cards: Darnell Furlong 45+3 (serious foul play) Yellow Cards: Molumby 33 (foul), Holgate 51 (delaying restart) Bartley 60 (foul), Wildsmith 90+2 (time wasting) QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Cook 5 (Lloyd 46, 4), Edwards 6, Paal 4 (Andersen 89, -); Morgan 5 (Dembele 69, 5), Colback 5; Min-Hyeok 5 (Ashby 89, -), Chair 5, Saito 6; Smyth 5 (Morrison 46, 6) Subs not used: Fox, Madsen, Bennie Walsh Yellow Cards: Cook 39 (dissent), Morrison 66 (foul), Colback 70 (foul), Lloyd 83 (repetitive fouling) Referee – Adam Herczeg (Durham) 3 An appalling display really. Never knowingly in control of the game. Took a flyer on the red card, regretted it, and therefore allowed the home players to absolutely rip the piss out of him for the entire second half. A farce. QPR 2 Oxford 0, Wednesday December 11, 2024, Championship Oxford set up in an unusually defensive shape and system for them, presumably thinking QPR would try and impose themselves on the game as the home team and they’d be able to counter. Rangers wanted to play as they have been playing recently, without the ball and high on the press. The result was that clip of the rugby union game where the two teams just drop kick the ball back and forth down the field at each other for an interminable length of time. A glitch in the sporting matrix. The only reason it doesn’t happen is the players usually don’t want it to happen, but it’s a perfectly legitimate way of playing the sport within the confines of the laws of the game. The only thing the match officials can do is blow for half time as soon as feasibly possible, and Championship newbie Adam Herczeg went on 45.01 – for which we all thank him dearly. QPR: Nardi 6; Dunne 6, Cook 7, Morrison 6 (Chair 84, -), Ashby 4; Varane 6 (Morgan 76, 6), Field 7; Smyth 7 (Fox 76, 5), Madsen 5 (Andersen 67, 6), Saito 7; Kolli 6 (Lloyd 66, 5) Subs not used: Santos, Dixon-Bonner, Bennie, Walsh Goals: Field 53 (assisted Kolli), 68 (assisted Saito) Yellow Cards: Fox 90+1 (foul), Lloyd 90+3 (kicking ball away) Oxford: Cumming 5; Kioso 3 (Dale 88, -), Moore 5, Brown 5, Leigh 3; Brannagan 6; Phillips 4 (Rodrigues 58, 6), Goodrham 6, El Mizouni 5 (McEachran 70, 5), Placheta 4 (Edwards 58, 5); Harris 5 (Scarlett 70, 5) Subs not used; Ingram, Thorniley, Vaulks, Avest Yellow Cards: Brannagan 13 (foul), Moore 27 (foul) Referee - Adam Herczeg (Durham) 6 Well there’s a thread on our message board about how terrible he was, detailing failures like QPR’s second half handball penalty appeal (never a penalty for me), the booking of Alfie Lloyd for kicking the ball away (don’t kick the ball away then) when Oxford didn’t get one for the same thing (they were losing 2-0, they want to waste their own time you lettum carry on), why there was nine minutes added to the end (significant injury stoppages with Madsen and Nardi). As you can probably tell, I thought he was fine. I came out thinking probably a seven. Bit perplexed why the Madsen incident in the penalty box was given as an Oxford free kick but I liked that he penalised for handball when Kioso fell on the ball trying to buy a free kick, and adding not a single second to the end of the first half was an act of pure mercy. Pretty fine by me. StatsAdam Herczeg finished his time in non-league in grand style at the end of the 2021/22 season, overseeing the remarkable Wrexham 4-5 Grimsby play-off game at The Racecourse Ground. He then did two years in Leagues One and Two, showing 83 yellows and two reds in 26 games (3.19) in 2022/23, and 108 yellows (3.17) and three reds across 34 games in 2023/24. He took charge of Huddersfield 1-3 Coventry at the end of March 2024 as his first Championship fixture. The QPR Oxford game was his first Championship outing in 2024/25 and second career game at this level. He finished the season with 130 yellows and four reds in 36 games, topped out by the eight yellows and red shown in that farce at The Hawthorns in March. Six of those games were in the Championship taking him up to seven career outings at this level, two of them QPR games. So far this season it’s 27 yellows (3.85) and no reds in seven appointments, four of which have been in the Championship. He began the campaign with Millwall’s 2-1 away win at Norwich on the opening day, with five yellow cards shown – his first and to this point only appointment with the Lions. If you enjoy LoftforWords, please consider supporting the site through a subscription to our Patreon or tip us via our PayPal account loftforwords@yahoo.co.uk. Pictures - Reuters Connect Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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