Probert hangs up his whistle
Yesterday the Premier League confirmed that Lee Mason would referee our game at Aston Villa this Saturday on the same day that the other refereeing Lee in the league announced he was hanging up his whistle after suffering with injuries in recent years.
Probert first refereed Burnley at Plymouth in the 2004/05 season. He had a shockingly poor game that day that offered real concerns as to whether he was anywhere close to being good enough to referee at that level.
He became a Football League referee in 2003, his first game coming at Northampton on the opening day of the 2003/04 season and he was selected for his first Premier League game in January 2007. That was a 1-1 draw between Sheffield United and Portsmouth at Bramall Lane but it was a game in the following season that he was quick to recall yesterday. “A 0-0 draw between Bolton and Middlesbrough in November 2007, that was a tough one,” he said.
“It probably won’t last long in the memory of football fans but it sticks in my mind as I was new to the Premier League. I had Kevin Davies on one side and David Wheater on the other and they were both managing the game better than I was. It wasn’t my best performance but I definitely learned from it.”
October 2009 saw him had out his first Premier League red cards. With three minutes remaining of a 1-1 draw between Everton and Aston Villa, he dismissed Everton’s Diniyar Bilyaletdinov with Villa’s Carlos Cuellar following right on time. The last player to see his red card in a Premier League game was also an Everton player; he sent off Kurt Zouma right at the end of their 1-0 loss at Watford in February this year.
Huddersfield’s Jonathan Hogg was the final player to get a Probert card, the only yellow in his final game which was Southampton v Huddersfield on the last day of last season.
He’s struggled with a back injury for a while and missed the entire 2015/16 season because of it. This is the reason he’s been forced to hang up his whistle at 47 during which time he’s refereed 181 Premier League games alongside the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Hull in 2014.
Looking back at those Burnley games he refereed, all shown below, there was just one red card which went the way of Watford’s Marvin Zeegelaar (shown above) when we beat them 1-0 at home in December 2017.
Lee Probert’s Burnley Games
| Season | Opponents | V | Res | Y | R | Burnley Players Carded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004/05 | Plymouth | a | 0-1 | 5 | 0 | Y: Grant, Branch, McGreal |
| 2005/06 | Leicester | a | 1-0 | 3 | 0 | Y: Hyde, Sinclair |
| 2005/06 | Crewe | h | 3-0 | 2 | 0 | Y: Duff |
| 2006/07 | Crystal Palace | a | 2-2 | 1 | 0 | Y: Hyde |
| 2007/08 | Barnsley | a | 1-1 | 2 | 0 | Y: Caldwell |
| 2008/09 | Birmingham | h | 1-1 | 3 | 0 | Y: Carlisle, Thompson |
| 2008/09 | Cardiff | a | 1-3 | 5 | 0 | Y: Carlisle, Elliott, Kalvanes, Williams |
| 2009/10 | Manchester United | a | 0-3 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2011/12 | Derby | h | 0-0 | 5 | 0 | Y: Mee, Marney |
| 2013/14 | Leeds | a | 2-1 | 3 | 0 | Y: Jones |
| 2016/17 | Bournemouth | a | 1-2 | 1 | 0 | Y: Brady |
| 2017/18 | Southampton | a | 1-0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2017/18 | Watford | h | 1-0 | 1 | 1 | Y: Bardsley |
| 2017/18 | West Brom | a | 2-1 | 4 | 0 | Y: Barnes, Cork, Pope |
| 2018/19 | Crystal Palace | a | 0-2 | 2 | 0 | Y: Mee |
| 2018/19 | Crystal Palace | h | 1-3 | 3 | 0 | Y: Mee |
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