George Courtney
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George Courtney
MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...
(born 4 June 1941) is an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
former
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...
based in
Spennymoor Spennymoor is a town and civil parish in County Durham (district), County Durham, England. It is south of the River Wear and is south of Durham, England, Durham. The civil parish includes the villages of Kirk Merrington, Middlestone Moor, Byers ...
,
County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly â€About North East E ...
. He is said to be a
freemason Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
. His vocational career was spent as a primary school
headteacher A head master, head instructor, bureaucrat, headmistress, head, chancellor, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the teacher, staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school ...
.


Ascent through English refereeing

Courtney started refereeing school games in and around his area of Spennymoor, in 1961. He later carried out both linesman and refereeing duties for the Northern League before becoming a
Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...
linesman in 1971. Just two years later he was appointed to the supplementary panel of referees and one year after that was included in the full list of referees at the age of only thirty three. In 1976, despite only being in his second year as a Football League referee, he was appointed to the decisive match for the League title in which
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
staged a dramatic recovery to beat
Wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; plural, : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large Canis, canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus, subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been reco ...
and overtake
QPR Queens Park Rangers Football Club, commonly abbreviated to QPR, is a professional football club based in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England, which compete in the . After a nomadic early existence, they have played home matches at Loftus R ...
. In 1977, he made the
FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
panel of referees. He had achieved this feat in only three seasons which was, until the case of
Martin Atkinson Martin Atkinson (born 31 March 1971) is an English referee coach and retired professional football referee who officiated primarily in the Premier League. He is a member of the West Riding County Football Association. Atkinson made his first ...
in 2006, the quickest in modern times. In 1979, he took charge of the Charity Shield and was back at Wembley the following May for the ultimate honour of the FA Cup Final between
West Ham West Ham is an area in East London, located east of Charing Cross in the west of the modern London Borough of Newham. The area, which lies immediately to the north of the River Thames and east of the River Lea, was originally an ancien ...
and
Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
.


Personal life

Courtney is married with one child. He was a head teacher before his referee career took off. On 9 February 2007, Courtney's son, Matthew, died after falling from the top floor of the gallery at the
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...
in London. An inquest in May 2007 heard that Matthew Courtney had undergone several years of treatment for manic depression – which "may have been triggered by cannabis use". The Southwark coroner said that Matthew Courtney had been suicidal. However, he recorded a verdict of accidental death.


Years at the top

Pat Partridge Patrick Partridge BEM (30 June 1933 – 31 October 2014) was an English football referee, and former President of the Association of Football League Referees and Linesmen. His occupation outside football was as a farmer.World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
referee,
Clive White Clive Bradley White (born 2 May 1940) is a retired English football referee from Harrow, Middlesex. Career White made the Football League referees list at the age of thirty three in 1973, after four years as a linesman. He made rapid progres ...
, the following year, led to George Courtney becoming the dominant refereeing figure of the 1980s. He took charge of the 1983
League Cup In several sports, most prominently association football, a league cup or secondary cup generally signifies a cup competition for which entry is restricted only to teams in a particular league. The first national association football tournament t ...
Final, thus completing the hat trick of major Wembley matches. He went on to referee numerous
FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
semi-finals as well as many top division games. He was due to retire in 1989 but in common with a number of other senior and respected officials at that time was granted an extension. He went on to serve three extra years on the list. This allowed him to officiate the second leg of the first division play off semi final between Newcastle United and Sunderland at St James's Park on 16 May 1990, which was won 2–0 by Sunderland after a 0–0 draw in the first leg. Courtney was forced to take the players off the field for 20 minutes late in the second half after Marco Gabbiadini's goal defeated Newcastle, leading to hundreds of Newcastle United supporters running onto the pitch.


International experience

Courtney was a frequent figure in
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
competitions and handled finals such as the 1989 Cup Winners Cup Final. He was England's representative at the 1984 European Championships he refereed the Semi Final between Denmark and Spain, followed by the
FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
s of
1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal ente ...
and
1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
. His appointment for the third place play-off in 1986 was the furthest any English referee had reached at the World Cup since Jack Taylor controlled the Final in
1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; f ...
, until
Howard Webb Howard Melton Webb MBE (born 14 July 1971) is an English former professional football referee who officiated primarily in the Premier League from 2003 to 2014, as well as for FIFA as a FIFA international referee from 2005 to 2014. Webb is cou ...
officiated the 2010 World Cup Final. The only competition he missed was the 1988 European Championships when
Keith Hackett Keith Stuart Hackett (born 22 June 1944) is an English former football referee, who began refereeing in local leagues in the Sheffield, South Yorkshire area in 1960. He is counted amongst the top 100 referees of all time in a list maintained b ...
was selected.


Retirement

Courtney retired from the
FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
list at the end of 1991 at the age of fifty. He was one of the last referees to have that privilege, as they reduced the maximum age for their officials to forty five at that point. He served out the rest of that season in
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. He took charge of an unprecedented second League Cup Final in 1992. The final match of his eventful career was the play-off game between
Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...
and
Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...
for a place in the new
Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
. Although extensions were still possible for over-age referees he had decided to retire from League refereeing, a few weeks short of his fifty-first birthday. Courtney is a past student of Chester University College. He subsequently became Director of Community Projects at
Middlesbrough F.C. Middlesbrough Football Club ( ) is a professional football club in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England, which competes in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football. Formed in 1876, they have played at the Riverside Stadium ...
He later worked as a UEFA delegate, charged with reporting on stadium and crowd control issues at UEFA matches, such as during the 1–0
UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
win by F.C. Shakhtar Donetsk at
S.L. Benfica Sport Lisboa e Benfica (), commonly known as Benfica, is a professional association football, football club based in Lisbon, Portugal, that competes in the Primeira Liga, the top flight of Portuguese football league system, Portuguese footba ...
on 3 October 2007.UEFA delegate
– example match, S.L. Benfica v. F.C. Shakhtar Donetsk, UEFA Champions League, October 2007:
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file at the
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
.com website.


References


Print

*Freddi, Cris (1998) The complete Book of the World Cup, Collins Willow. *Football League handbooks *Rothmans Football Yearbooks


Internet

{{DEFAULTSORT:Courtney, George 1941 births People from Spennymoor Sportspeople from County Durham Living people Members of the Order of the British Empire FA Cup Final referees FIFA World Cup referees 1990 FIFA World Cup referees Alumni of the University of Chester English football referees 1986 FIFA World Cup referees English Football League referees UEFA Euro 1984 referees AFC Asian Cup referees