How traffic lights revolutionised caution and punishment in modern day football

Ken Aston, Head of Referees during the 1966 Fifa World Cup (centre), during the tossing of the coin in a match between Manchester United and Leicester City. PHOTO | COURTESY |

What you need to know:

  • Mr Aston’s invention left an indelible mark on football and his creation remains a compelling example of the triumph of order over chaos.

I was driving down Ngong Road when I came upon the recently installed traffic lights at the roundabout next to the city mortuary. The lights were red and I stopped.

But a traffic policeman out ahead frantically waved me to drive on. I complied and glanced at the long queue of vehicles he had stopped on Mbagathi Way.

The drivers were staring at their green lights.

For the umpteenth time, I went away musing about this Kenyan novelty where a policeman expends copious amounts of energy countermanding functioning traffic lights while he could simply leave them alone and do something that requires his input.

Like catching those who disobey them.

In this bizarre world, red means ‘go’ and green means ‘stop.’ But not all the time. Sometimes red does mean ‘stop’, as it is intended to, and green ‘go.’

In fact, you could get arrested for not observing that. And this may come just after a very angry policeman had startled you with a loud bark for obeying the lights instead of shooting them at the previous junction.

The automated intersection has thus become one of the greatest sources of stress for anybody driving in Nairobi.

All manner of questions swirl around your mind: What are the intentions of that policeman standing there? What will all these drivers around me do? Are boda bodas covered by the Highway Code and the Traffic Act? What about matatus? And VIPs?

Here is how the electronic device called a traffic light, whose sophistication lies in its simplicity and whose silent but clear visual instructions can be understood in any language of the world, changed the game of football as we know it today. It is the story of Ken Aston, the most revered referee in the history of the game.

It is the story of how he revolutionised the application of caution and punishment on the pitch out of a small misunderstanding.

Mr Aston may not have set out to make history but his invention left an indelible mark on football and his creation remains a compelling example of the triumph of order over chaos regardless of the intensity of the passions at play and the language being spoken.
Ken Aston was the Head of Referees during the 1966 Fifa World Cup held in and won by England.

'HAND OF GOD GOAL'

One of the most volatile matches of the tournament was the quarter final match between the hosts and Argentina.

The two countries seem to have an eternal feud. (In 1982, they went to war over some islands in the South Atlantic the English call the Falklands but which are to the Argentines the Malvinas and in 1986 Diego Maradona knocked England out of the Mexico World Cup with his infamous Hand of God goal. It was all coming from somewhere).

Brazilian former ace footballer Ronaldo (left) and former Argentinian former football ace Diego Maradona attend the victory ceremony of the 2017 Confederations Cup final match between Chile and Germany at the Saint Petersburg Stadium in Saint Petersburg on July 2, 2017. PHOTO | FRANCK FIFE |

In 1966, the England Manager, Sir Alf Ramsey, described Argentina’s overly physical tactics thus: “They play like animals.”

It was an insult the South Americans never forgave and the passage of time doesn’t seem to heal anything. In that match, the German referee, Rudolf Kreitlein, sent off the Argentina captain Antonio Rattin in an action that almost led to the abandonment of the match.

As Head of Referees, Aston received a full match report. But there was a small problem.

Aston was informed that England defender Jack Charlton was cautioned by referee Kreitlein but in a press conference, the player said nothing of the sort had happened. Aston watched the press conference and he couldn’t be sure that Charlton was not telling the truth. The game itself had been a roughhouse and Kreitlein had apparently not indicated all the players that he had booked.

After Jack Charlton spiritedly denied having been booked, his manager Sir Alf appealed to Fifa to make a clarification on the player’s fate.

That burden fell on Aston and the referee left office for home late in the evening with the problem weighing on his mind since Kreitlein’s report produced more heat than light.

Driving on London’s Kensington High Street, the brooding Aston stopped at a traffic light intersection and waited for the lights to turn green.

That is when he got a brain wave. He observed: red means stop and green means go while yellow is the safe interface between them - meaning you either slow down and stop or you get ready to move when green came on.

He thought: this can work in football, too!

He later wrote: “As I drove down Kensington High Street, the traffic light turned red. I thought, ‘Yellow, take it easy; red, stop, you’re off’.”

When he got home, he shared the conflicting match reports with his wife and added that he thought the lights which flawlessly controlled vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian traffic all on their own could provide the solution.

His wife dashed to a room inside and came out carrying two cardboard cards – one yellow and the red. She had cut both to fit into his shirt pockets.
And there, the football world’s card system of caution and punishment was born.

Aston presented his innovation to Fifa’s next technical meeting whose plate was full as it usually is after every World Cup.

Committee members were more than enthused. In the World Cup that followed in Mexico in 1970, yellow and red cards were used for the first time to caution and expel errant players.

The system holds firm to this day and has even been copied by other sports disciplines.

One of the greatest benefits accruing from the new system is that everybody watching the match in person or on television is a witness to what the referee does.

They can see the cards being flashed. The media records the event. (You will agree that some of the most interesting action photos or footage of a football match are those of a player being sent off or being cautioned.) With cards, the question of being lost in translation does not arise. So entrenched did this invention become that it is now even used in a proverbial sense. For example, if somebody has been sacked from his job, it is common to hear people say that he has been shown the red card.

But history’s most revered referee is remembered for more than the cards he introduced into the game.

In 1946, he became the first man to wear the black uniform with white trimmings before it was phased out by today’s colourful outfits. My generation of sports journalists started off by sometimes referring to referees as “the men in black” before that term was appropriated by some political characters with very hard edges.

BATTLE OF SANTIAGO

And in 1966 Aston introduced the person known today as the fourth official.

At that time, he was simply called the substitute referee whose role was to stand by and pick up the whistle if for any reason the designated first official was unable to officiate the game.

It was also Aston who ensured that the pressure of the ball is specified in the laws of the game.

He was a member of the Fifa Referees Committee for eight years and chaired it for four of those. These included being in charge of all referees for the 1966, 1970 and 1974 Fifa World Cups.

Aston was the unfortunate official fated to referee the infamous Battle of Santiago World Cup match between Italy and Chile in 1962 which I described in detail in a previous column.

Of that match, he ruefully remarked: “I wasn’t reffing a football match. I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres.”

On three separate occasions, armed police intervened in the game, eventually won 2-0 by Chile, to help restore order. In any roster of infamous matches played in the World Cup, that match always comes out at the top – or very near there.

Ken Aston immortalized his work in a course whose recorded series was called “Refereeing is thinking.” He died on 23 October 2001, aged 86.

And so back to the beginning. On our roads, the red and green lights mean one and the same thing according to a vast number of motorists, pedestrians, cyclists and policemen.

You can go or stop depending on what you like. To a critical mass of people, the lights are a nuisance to be contemptuously brushed aside and not a well thought out system to maintain public order.

Think about the same thing carried into the football field. Suppose a referee flashed a red card in the face of a substitute preparing to come into the pitch and then barked at him to come in faster.

What would such a player make of his actions? Insane, right?

Suppose the red card sometimes means you are expelled and at other times you are cautioned and all that is at the discretion of the referee. Suppose players are free to interpret the meaning of the red and yellow cards and act according to those interpretations.

French referee Stephane Jochem (left) presents a yellow card to Caen's French-Guinean midfielder Baissama Sankoh during their French L1 match against Guingamp on February 10, 2018 at the Roudourou stadium. PHOTO | FRED TANNEAU |

What kind of matches would we have? The answer is, of course, very simple: they would resemble our intersections which are permanently littered with broken glass. Thankfully, in football, the red and yellow cards mean one and only one thing.

The players have no option but to obey them and challenge the referee’s authority only at a grave risk to their careers. Ken Aston left us a wonderful legacy.

Referee Andre Marriner shows a red card to Manchester United's French midfielder Paul Pogba (left) for his challenge on Arsenal's Spanish defender Hector Bellerin during their English Premier League match at the Emirates Stadium in London on December 2, 2017. PHOTO | IAN KINGTON |