Former referee Graham Poll's article in today's Dail explains how the panel of other former referees decided to charge Craig Bellamy with violent conduct.
Poll explains:
● Anyone — a club official, a referee, a fan — can alert the FA to an incident they feel should be punished but the officials missed. This applies to the top four divisions.
● When a complaint is made to the FA, they look for footage of the alleged incident and then refer it to a panel of three former Premier League referees: Steve Dunn, Alan Wiley and Eddie Wolstenholme.
● The referee who missed the incident is not part of the process.
● The three ex-referees do not sit together or confer. The video is posted on a secure website and the panel each use a password at home to access the clips.
● Each then reply to the FA, stating whether, if they had been the referee and seen the incident as they have on the replay, they would have taken no action, shown a yellow card or sent the player off.
● Only in cases where all three men state that they would have dismissed the player do the FA then charge the offender. The members of the panel do not know how the other two voted but can obviously tell that the other two have also said it should be a red card if the player is charged.
The full article can be found here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2556256/GRAHAM-POLL-Deciding-charge-Craig-Bellamy-let-Yaya-Toure-secret-vote-gang-three.html
Manchester City's Yaya Toure was cleared after being spotted kicking out at Norwich player Ricky van Wolfswinkel. The decision not to change Toure has provided the radio and tv discussions with enough ammunition to suggest a big club bias.
The Premier League mangers i their midweek press conferences thought that both Bellamy and Tourne should have been cited or neither of them.
If Bellamy accepts the change by 6pm today he will miss Cardiff's next three Premier League matches starting with tonight's game against Villa.